R U M O R S # 517
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-08-31
August 31, 2008
WHAT’S REALLY MOST IMPORTANT
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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The Story – eat standing up
Rumors – ten minutes to decide
Soft Edges – text messaging
Good Stuff – how to handle telemarketers
Bloopers – prayers for continence
We Get Letters – I’ll eat my hat”
Mirabile Dictu! – Herman Newticks
Bottom of the Barrel – only funny in the USA
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – This from Evelyn McLachlan who got it from her brother.
A tough old cowboy counseled his grandson that if he wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a pinch of gun-power on his oatmeal every morning.
The grandson did this religiously to the age of 103, when he died.
He left behind 14 children, 30 grandchildren, 45 great grandchildren and a deep hole in the ground where the crematorium used to be.
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The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, September 7th, which is Proper 18 [23].
Exodus 12:1-14 – Last week we told the story of Moses and the burning bush and his commission to go and liberate the Hebrews. This week he’s leading them out of Egypt. I think it’s only decent to give the folks a summary of what happened in-between.
This passage is really the instructions on how to celebrate the Passover, which is the central observance for all Jews. It has lots of elements of primitive religion showing through, such as the business of the lamb and blood on the doorposts. In this story, God is still a tribal god who is ready to rain death on those outside the tribe, i.e. the Egyptians.
This is also the core passage for the central story of Judaism. We were slaves in Egypt. God made a covenant with us in the giving of the law, and led us through the wilderness to a promised land.
And that theme is there in the Christian tradition. We were slaves to sin. God made a new covenant with us in the death and resurrection of Christ and we will be welcomed into the promised land of heaven.
It all sounds really pagan and self-serving when described that way. Perhaps that’s why the Jews, in their wisdom, didn’t describe it very much. They told the story every year to their children at home and in the synagogue. Such legends can’t withstand a lot of analysis.
So why not tell the two stories – parallel stories. And I wish I knew the Islamic story well enough to see if it parallels these two as well. What little I do know is that all three of the great world religions tell a story of God’s intimate and loving participation on the human journey.
On the other hand, there’s urgency about the story. You eat standing up. You take only what you can carry. No time to stop and think. It’s time! Now! (See “Rumors” below.)
Ralph Milton
For some reason, when I was younger, I thought that “Passover” referred to “passing over/through” the Red Sea to freedom. I still remember my sense of shock, in a Bible study group, when I discovered that it actually referred to the destroying angel passing over the homes of those who had daubed their doors with sacrificial blood.
It seemed so pagan!
And yet there’s an obvious connection to Jesus’ comment about new covenant being marked by his blood.
As I re-read this passage now, I wonder what happened to chapters 4-11 – Moses’ confrontations with his stepfather, the ten plagues, the misery of the population... Because the Passover actually marks the final plague, which was, in modern terms, an act of genocide, of “ethnic cleansing.” Exodus 11:9 makes that genocide deliberate – “so that you may know the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.”
Ralph suggests talking about the urgency of packing up. It's a good illustration. But I also like his comment about the Hebrew people eating standing up, so that they’re ready to go at any moment. I’d probably invite the congregation to stand through the sermon, so that they can’t doze off, and thus experience for just a few minutes the tension and pressure of the original Passover.
Perhaps only people who have escaped from some form of genocide themselves can fully understand the urgency of getting out NOW!!!! But perhaps, with a bit of empathizing, we can understand why this experience was seared into the collective memory of Jews.
Jim Taylor
Psalm 149 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
In recent years, many autocratic governments have been overthrown – not by force or power, but by the accumulative energy of ordinary people, the communion of saints.
1 Familiar words aren't enough.
New times call for new ways to praise God.
2 So dance. Sing.
Show you love God with your bodies as well as your words.
3 Use every means you have
–your music, your work, your social systems–
to demonstrate your love for God.
4 God will not shun you because you show your emotions.
Love is not limited to important positions or plummy accents.
5 So join together with others.
Link your hands and link your lives.
Clap your hands and sing;
Raise the roof in praise of God.
6 Let the vigor of your voices overflow into your living.
Seize each challenge as an opportunity
7 to promote justice among all the people,
to bring to judgment to those who cause pain and suffering.
8 Even ruthless dictators cannot resist the surge of popular pressure.
The longer they try to withstand the tide, the deeper they drown.
9 That is how to give God praise.
Let us praise God!
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Romans 13:8-14 – My Jewish friends tell me that Paul is not saying anything uniquely Christian here, that verses 8 to 10 are there in the Torah. And his exhortation to a spiritual and moral life-style is as necessary now as ever, though I think I might differ with him on some of the details, particularly that business of gratifying the flesh.
Matthew 18:15-20 – Matthew’s formula for solving church problems works. Or so I’m told by my evangelical friends. But it’s the last verse of this passage that interests me. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Clearly Matthew means the Christ here, but last summer I heard a rabbi, an Islamic scholar, and Christian laymen invoke the presence of God and talk to each other for a week. Listening to their conversation, I am convinced God was there.
For a children’s version of the Exodus story see “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 198. The Matthew passage called, “How to Fix a Problem” is on page 200.
If you don’t already own this book, click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.” Both Year A and Year B are now available.
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – The weather has cooled in the last week or so and we’ve had a fair bit of rain. And all of us in this valley are breathing a bit more easily.
We live in the Okanagan, a valley that stretches from the interior of Washington State up into British Columbia. We’re in the rain shadow of the Coast Range of mountains so it’s relatively dry. A semi-desert in the area where we live.
A few years ago we had a disastrous fire storm that destroyed hundreds of home in the city of Kelowna and elsewhere. I’m sure you heard about it in your news broadcasts or read about it in your newspaper. A fire storm is such a large fire that it develops its own climate and there’s almost nothing that can stop it.
And now, the devastation of the pine beetle. Because of global warming, the winter frosts have not kept them in check, and they have killed pine trees over hundreds of thousands of acres. When an electrical storm moved through our valley, every one of us worried. If another fire-storm got going, it could be worse than the last one. But the fire-fighters were ready, and we’ve survived to worry another year.
The summer of the great fire, Bev and I (like most other people) had a small stack of boxes by our front door. We would only be able to take what we could pack in our car. Some of our friends had ten minutes to do that. Ten minutes to decide what was most precious. Reflecting back on that experience, they realized their choices said a lot of about them. What is most important in your life? What is most valuable? Their answers were revealing – sometimes inspiring – sometimes depressing.
That’s the sense of the Exodus story. This is not a leisurely trip with a huge moving van. This is picking up what you can carry. No more. So the question is – what is most important. What do you want to carry on your back as you leave the relative security of Egypt for the unknown wilderness?
Last Tuesday, I spoke at a memorial service for a friend of many years, John Hole. When I visited John the last time, I think he knew he was dying, though he wasn’t able to say much. And his last gift to me was a joke about his bowels and a kind of a blessing. “Take care of yourself, Ralph.”
Friends who volunteer at the hospice tell me that when people are dying, they often do something very similar to packing up your car when the air is full of smoke. As they reflect on their final journey, they think deeply about what is most important to them, and who is most important to them.
We don’t need to wait until there’s a fire, or till we’re dying, or until there’s a national disaster or mass evacuation. The process of sorting through our real priorities, and then living our lives in the light of those priorities, can happen any time. As Bev and I get older – as we attend more and more services for friends, colleagues and family – the need to do that sorting gets stronger.
It’s a wonderfully liberating experience, as it turns out. When through prayer, meditation, conversation and experience, we can discover what is most important to us, we can begin to let go of all the stuff – material and otherwise – that doesn’t matter any more. Life becomes easier and richer because we’re not flying off in all directions trying to do everything and be everything.
We know who we are and whose we are.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Text Messaging
A few years back, I saw a cartoon strip about a teenager facing his final English exam.
“Why aren’t you studying for it?” Mom asks.
“Aw, Mom,” he reassures her, “English is like a second language for me!”
It was, in hindsight, a prophetic cartoon. English – classical English, with well-turned phrases and carefully chosen words – is becoming as foreign to many speakers as Swahili or Urdu.
In Scotland, according to the usually reliable Guardian newspaper, school boards have instructed teachers to accept the abbreviations of text-messaging in essays and exam answers.
Indeed, one enterprising 13-year-old student apparently wrote an entire paper describing her summer holidays in textspeak.
We tend to think of technology as a tool of communication. On the surface, at least, the typewriter and telephone simply enhanced speed without altering content.
But cell-phones demonstrate a different phenomenon. The tool is changing the way we communicate, the language we use, the words we understand.
Brevity matters, when you’re tapping out messages with just your thumb on a cell-phone’s keypad. Some thumbs get blindingly fast. I read somewhere that a Japanese author has written several best-selling novels on her cell-phone, while riding the Tokyo subway.
“Texting” has become a new verb.
An Internet page invited readers to identify the 50 most common text abbreviations. They included BTW – By The Way, FWIW – For What It's Worth, IMHO – In My Humble Opinion, ISTM – It Seems to Me, LOL – Laughing Out Loud, TIA – Thanks in Advance, TTYL – Talk To You Later
This new vocabulary does not come naturally. You have to learn it. Sometimes you have to sound it out. BCNU becomes “Be Seeing You,” and 2MORO turns into “tomorrow.” Or else you have to guess the familiar phrase that the letters might refer to – PIR apparently means “Parent In Room”; GTG stands for “Got To Go”; and TFL, “Thanks For Listening.”
We’ve always used abbreviations. Almost everyone knows ASAP, PS, and NB. Some still remember SNAFU.
And all bureaucracies abound in TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms).
A professor in Coventry suggests text-messaging may actually improve language skills. A speech therapist praises the “ability to code-switch,” in the same way that fluency in multiple languages is known to enhance thinking and communication.
OTOH, texting is not another language.
To go slightly OT (off topic), English is difficult enough to learn – what with irregular verbs, even more irregular spellings, borrowed words, contradictory idioms, and enough rules about commas to induce a coma – without adding the complexity of guessing the words that a bunch of letters might be replacing.
Textspeak is, IMHO, a sub-level of English, a layer as incomprehensible to the outsider as Cockney rhyming slang.
What, for example, would a Chinese speaker, already struggling to learn English idiosyncrasies, make of DILLIGAS?
If you must know, it stands for “Do I Look Like I Give A S..t?”
Instead of encouraging communication, ISTM, textspeak becomes a barrier. It excludes those who don’t already know the lingo.
Anyway, GTG. BFN & TFL. TTYL.
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Good Stuff – Jan Greene sent along “Andy Rooney's Tips for Handling Telemarketers.” The ideas are creatively subversive. I don’t think we should insult or inconvenience the person who phones. They are not the ones to blame. One of my children had a job as a telemarketer for short while because she badly needed a job. She would come from work feeling emotionally bruised and battered by the insults people threw at her.
Here’s a summary of what Rooney suggests.
1) Say politely, “Hold on, please.” Or if it’s a recording, just set the phone down but don’t hang up. Then leave the phone off the hook until it starts beeping. It gums up the phone system, and not the feelings of the person who called.2) If it’s a recorded message, hit your # button a dozen times or so. Apparently this confuses the machine that called and kicks your number out of the system.
3) Junk Mail Help: When you get "ads" enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these "ads" with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away4) When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to second mortgages, do not throw away the return envelope. At least not if it has postage-paid return on the envelope. Just stuff the ads back in the envelope and send it back. It costs the sender more to receive that mail. For an extra bit of fun, you can add bits of junk mail from other sources. Send a Master Card or Visa ad to American Express!
Jan says this kind of creative ecological subversiveness is catching on. So pass the word around. Maybe if enough people do this, this kind of marketing will stop.
We can always dream!
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Bob Warrick in Australia picked up a couple of bloopers for us:
* The words projected onto the screen '.... mailed him to the cross'
* A printed baptism order included the Aaronic blessing including; 'The Lord lift up his continence upon you'
Bob, as an aging males, we appreciate those prayers for continence. And the blooper reminds me of a person who was described as “mentally incontinent.”
Evelyn McLachlan was talking to the children at church, showing them the Interfaith Gold Rule from the Seasons of the Spirit curriculum, and telling the youngsters that we are all created equal in the sight of God. “Jews, Christians Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus. . .”
“And the Irish!” said one of the youngsters.
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Never wrestle with a pig. You will both get dirty – and the pig likes it.
source unknown
Worry is the interest we pay on tomorrow's troubles.
E. Stanley Jones via Evelyn McLachlan
A saint is one who makes goodness attractive.
Laurence Houseman
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We Get Letters – Son-in-law Don McNair wasn’t too impressed with one of our quotes last week, namely:
By serving others and putting others' needs before oneself, only then can we truly impact the world with change. Abraham Lincoln via Roger Smith
Says Don: “If Lincoln ever used "impact" as a verb, I will eat my hat, and your vest, Grandpa.”
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Herman Newticks!”)
Suppose you’re traveling to work and see a stop sign. What should you do?
Well, that depends on how you exegete the stop sign:
* Knocking the sign over with her car, a post-modernist deconstructs the sign, ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic.
* Similarly, a Marxist refuses to stop because he sees the stop sign as an instrument of class conflict, concluding that when the bourgeois use the north-south road, they obstruct the progress of the workers on the east-west road.
* A serious and educated Catholic rolls through the intersection because she believes she cannot understand the stop sign apart from its interpretive community and tradition. Observing that the interpretive community doesn’t take it too seriously, she doesn’t feel obligated to take it too seriously, either.
* A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at the stop sign and waits for it to tell him he can go.
* A seminary-educated evangelical preacher looks up “stop” in his English lexicon and discovers that it can mean: i) something which prevents motion, such as a plug for a drain, or a block of wood that prevents a door from closing; or ii) a location where a train or bus lets off passengers. The main point of his sermon on this text the following Sunday is: “When you see a stop sign, it is a place where traffic is naturally clogged, so it is a good place to let off passengers from your car.”
* A scholar from the Jesus Seminar concludes that the passage “STOP” undoubtedly was never uttered by Jesus himself, because being the progressive Jew that he was, he would never have wanted to stifle people’s progress. Therefore, STOP must be a textual insertion belonging entirely to Stage III of the gospel tradition, when the church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot.
* A New Testament scholar notices that while there is no stop sign on Mark Street, signs are found on Matthew and Luke Streets. He concludes that the signs on Luke and Matthew Streets were both copied from a sign on a street no one has ever seen called “Q Street.” In the scholar’s commentary on the passage, there is an excellent 300-page doctoral dissertation on the origin of these stop signs, and on the differences between stop signs on Matthew and Luke Streets. There is an unfortunate omission in the dissertation, however. It doesn’t explain the meaning of the text!
* An Old Testament scholar points out that there are a number of stylistic differences between the first and second halves of the “STOP” passage. For example, “ST” contains no enclosed areas and five line endings, whereas “OP” contains two enclosed areas and only one line termination. She concludes that the author of the second part is different from the author of the first part and probably lived hundreds of years later. Later scholars determine that stylistic differences between the “O” and the “P” show that the second half was itself actually written by two separate authors.
* Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another Old Testament scholar amends the text, changing the “T” to “H.” Because of the multiplicity of stores in the area, “SHOP” is much easier to understand in context than “STOP.” The textual corruption probably occurred because “SHOP” is so similar to “STOP” on the sign several streets back. It is a natural mistake for a scribe to make. Thus the sign should be interpreted as announcing the existence of a shopping area. But then perhaps both meanings are valid, with the full thrust of the message being “STOP (AND) SHOP.”
Source unknown
Two Tylenol and a brisk walk will help you recover from the above.
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Bottom of the Barrel – This story is really only funny in the US.
Three doctors die and go to heaven. “Why should I admit you into heaven?” St Peter asks the first one.
“Because I was the leading podiatrist in England,” says the doctor.
“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter. “And what about you?” he says to the second doctor.
“I was the most respected cardiologist in Belgium,” says the second doctor.
“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter. “And what about you?” he says to the third doctor.
“I was the most eminent brain surgeon in Canada,” says the third doctor.
“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter.
Just then another person appears. “Why should I admit you to heaven?” St. Peter demands.
“Because I was head of the biggest HMO in the United States,” he says proudly.
“You may come into heaven,” says St. Peter. “But you can only stay for three days.”
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
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* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Preaching Materials for August 31, 2008
R U M O R S # 516
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-08-24
August 24, 2008
I WILL GO
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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The new shape of the Story Lectionary is visible below. Jim and I hope it will prove more useful to those who preach and more interesting to those who simply read.
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The Story – strength from fire
Rumors – the birth of a prophet
Soft Edges – ultimate deterrents
Good Stuff – a joke or a story of grace
Bloopers – well developed parts
We Get Letters – commuters hymn
Mirabile Dictu! – a nude piano
Bottom of the Barrel – a phone call to God
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – This from Jim Beinke of Los Alamos, New Mexico.
A Sunday school teacher said to her children, "We have been earning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But, there is a higher power. Can anybody tell me what it is?”
A small hand shot up. “Aces!” said the child.
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The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, August 31st, which is the 16th Sunday after Pentecost.
Exodus 3:1-15 – It’s hard to choose, when the RCL offers two compelling stories on the same Sunday. We have a choice between Jesus anticipating his death and resurrection, and Moses experiencing his birth, which was also a kind of resurrection.
Because I prefer life to death, I’d go with the burning bush.
But how does one make real, concrete, palpable, a fire that doesn’t consume and destroy? It’s as difficult as walking on water. You can’t even light a fire in most churches without setting off smoke alarms and sprinkler systems!
So I think I’d go for a different metaphor entirely – the recent Olympic games. Visually, I could use news photos enlarged, track spikes, T-shirts...
The Olympic athletes had a fire burning inside them. It drove them into ceaseless training, personal sacrifice, and total commitment. Yet it does not destroy them (unless the lust for gold leads them to cheat through drugs, etc.) but empowers them. Win or lose, they come out of their fire stronger than they went in.
The same attributes would apply to the refiner’s fire (Malachi 3:2), the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:27), the fire in Jeremiah’s bones (20:6), and the flames of Pentecost (Acts 2:3).
Moses encountered the burning bush a stammering coward, running away from the consequences of his actions. He came out capable of leading his people to freedom.
Jim Taylor
This is one of the key stories in the Hebrew Bible. It is the legend of Moses encountering God, the central story in the Jewish tradition. And since the Gospel writers often linked Jesus with Moses, central to the Christian tradition as well.
We often assume that it is only folks in the Bible and a few modern saints who encounter God. The truth is that many folks have experienced moments of holiness, but they either don’t notice, or are too embarrassed to talk about it. “People will think I’ve lost it,” a friend told me not long ago after relating an experience of the holy.
I’ve had many experiences of God – some of them quite momentary and small, such as last week when I was walking along the beach photographing shells and rocks. The iridescent glow in an open shell held me in a tiny moment of holiness.
About 14 years ago, an experience of the real, palpable presence of God shuddered through my whole body. It came as I wept at the bedside of my elder brother Randy, holding his hand as he moved toward his death, while in my other hand I held a snapshot of Jake, my brand new grandson.
There is little I can say in words to describe that event, because the sense of God’s full presence went far beyond anything words can describe.
So it seems to me the power of the story of Moses and his encounter with God comes to us as a catalyst to help us remember those moments when we were aware, fully aware, of a power and a presence that is always with us.
Ralph Milton
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
God's Saving Power
Our team won gold at the Olympics; our candidate wins the election; our author wins the Pulitzer Prize – and we act as if we had something to do with it.
1 Here they come!
We rise to our feet –
we give them a standing ovation.
In the coffee shop, in the shopping mall, in the churches,
we discuss their wonderful deeds.
2 We organize a parade down Main Street in their honor;
we proclaim their greatness in every newspaper and broadcast.
3 They make us proud of ourselves.
4 We press close around them;
we collect their autographs.
5 For they have performed miracles;
they have done more than we dreamed they could.
6 We share in their fame–
we bask in their glory
for we come from the same roots.
16 We have waited a long time for this recognition;
we deserve every delicious moment of it.
Roberta Bondar spent years in obscurity, training to be an astronaut. After her mission, she became an instant celebrity.
17 We have had our hopes raised before.
We invested our faith in saviors.
We put them on pedestals, but they let us down;
they had clay feet.
We turned on them;
18 like jackals, we tore their reputations apart.
19 But one of them became famous, after all.
20 We praised her to the heavens;
at luncheons and dinners, we sat her in the place of honor.
21 We elected her to high office;
she endorsed luxury cars on television.
22 She was invited to talk to students in school assemblies;
in our eyes, she could do nothing wrong.
45 She brought us great honor.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Romans 12:9-21 – This is Paul’s list of things to do and not do, or perhaps more correctly, a way to be. These injunctions come right out of the Hebrew Torah, and are not as radical as Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus tells us not to even think about some of these things.
This list might be useful, if we use it as a check-list to take a close look at our own values. But it would require some pretty powerful honesty that many of us would find hard to muster.
Matthew 16:21-28 – Poor Peter. In verse 17 he was being praised for having recognized Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, the Christ. Now he’s getting roasted for a limited understanding of what that Messiah is.
Peter’s story is also our story in many cases. Through years of faithful church involvement, through a new sense of what the Gospel is all about, or through an experience of the living God, we recognize the presence of God in our lives.
That’s not the end of the journey. It’s beginning. For Moses, it was the beginning of a saga that would go on for more than 40 years. For Peter, it was the beginning of a ministry that would take him all over the known world.
For each of us, that moment of recognition – of realization – that theophany – is the beginning of a journey through which we will learn to know God – but always with the painful beauty of knowing the unknowable.
For a children’s version of Moses’ theophany, see “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 194. A story based on the Matthew passage is on page 196.
There are children’s stories for every Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary, in “The Lectionary Story Bible,” by yours truly. The marvellous illustrations are by Margaret Kyle. There’s at least one story for each Sunday, usually two, and occasionally three. Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors –
The story of...
Moses
"....you are standing on holy ground."
from “Is This Your Idea of a Good Time, God?”
www.woodlakebooks.com
Moses kicked the dry and rocky rubble. He hated the desert. He hated Midian where he lived in exile. He hated the sheep he cared for, sheep that amazed and amused him with their stupidity.
"Ha!" snorted Moses. "I'm amazed and amused by my own stupidity."
A moment of recklessness had brought him to this wilderness. An Israelite slave abused by an Egyptian overseer. In a flash of anger Moses killed the overseer. Then ran into the desert like a hunted coyote.
Moses hated this dry and lifeless place. He wanted so desperately to be back in Egypt, in the palace, eating well-cooked food, sipping well-aged wine, exchanging well-phrased witticisms with well-dressed courtiers.
But here he was in this God forsaken desert. No one to talk to but the half-witted sheep. Nothing to eat except half-cooked mutton. Nothing to drink except lukewarm water.
Moses felt trapped in this wilderness. He felt trapped by Zipporah his wife. He felt trapped by the son he had fathered and named Gershom, which means, "I have become an alien in a foreign land." For a moment, he hated his wife, his son. Moses hated everything.
There in the searing desert, Moses wept for all that was lost to him, the tears drying instantly in the heat.
His earliest years had been spent with his mother, Jacobed, who told Moses the ancient stories of a chosen people and planted the seeds of faith in a God who cared.
Then he had been taken to live with his adoptive mother in the Pharaoh's palace. There the noxious weeds of ambition, pride, envy and greed had all but choked the tiny seedlings of faith planted by his mother.
Now in the heat of the desert sun, Moses struggled to keep those seedlings alive. At night he would fanaticize a triumphant return to the lush Nile valley – to all his friends in Pharaoh's court. But now, in the glaring brightness of noonday he could only think of his family, his people, struggling to make bricks for the ambitious, cruel Pharaoh.
At first Moses tried not to think of his family. He tried not to think of the Israelites. "They're slaves," he muttered. "But so what? They do all right if they're not lazy. They get enough to eat. Anyway, it’s none of my business. If I'd realized that sooner, I'd still be in Pharaoh's court."
But the thought wouldn't go away. The seeds of his Israelite past were well planted. The seeds of his mother's stories, of a sister who had risked her life. And the seeds grew well in the heat of his anger.
"Why?" Moses yelled out to no one in particular. Or maybe to God. "Why does it have to be like this? Why do you let my people be slaves? Why don't you do something?"
The sheep scampered away at his outburst. There was no other response.
In the tent, at night, Moses felt some comfort. Here in the tent, he loved Zipporah and his son.
Moses snuggled closer to Zipporah and tugged the blanket over them against the cold. He remembered Zipporah pregnant with Gershom, how he felt the child grow and move in her womb as he lay close to her in the night.
As he drifted off to sleep, Moses half-imagined that he too was pregnant with... with something... something God had seeded. He dozed and the fantasy, or dream became a memory of twins in a womb, of Esau and Jacob struggling, each trying to dominate the other. Now Moses was both of them, and one twin was Moses the ambitious courtier and the other was Moses the angry slave. And both were struggling toward birth. And one would die in the struggle and the other would be born. Moses started awake, his hand on his own belly.
The dream was in his mind the next morning. And the next. He almost felt an ache in his belly. Or was it pleasure?
It was noon. The familiar sun was punishing the earth. Moses pulled his cloak around his head against the heat. A crackle broke the stillness. Moses turned. A small bush on fire. Not unusual in this heat, but then he noticed that the bush was not consumed. It burned and burned, and Moses went to have a look.
"Moses!" The voice was gentle, quiet, strong.
He stopped. Afraid.
"Don't come any closer, Moses," said the voice. "And take off your shoes. The place where you are standing is holy ground."
Quickly, Moses fumbled off his sandals. The hot rubble burned his feet. He gasped at the pain of it as a woman gasps for breath in labor.
"Moses! I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying at the hands of the slave masters. Moses, I will bring my people out of Egypt. You will go down to Pharaoh and bring them out of slavery and into a land that I will show you."
"But who am I?" said Moses. "I don't know anything about this. I'm just a shepherd. Why me?"
"Moses!" said the voice. "I am with you now. I will be with you then. You will bring my people out of Egypt."
Moses struggled to find his breath. This, he knew, was the moment he had dreaded and longed for. Now was the choice, the holy, terrifying moment.
The universe of human soul struggled in the pangs of birth, struggled forward, held back, groaned itself to birth and death. All that was, held Moses back. All that might be, pushed him on.
One last breath shuddered, rattled through his body.
Death. And peace.
The barely whispered words. "I will go." Moses turned and faced the land where he was born.
There in the desert, the life-destroying desert, a midwife God had loved a prophet into birth.
"Go down, Moses,
way down in Egypt land.
Tell old Pharaoh,
to let my people go."
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Ultimate Deterrents
Tim McLean’s death on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba, at the end of July, haunts me. A complete stranger stabbed him repeatedly in the neck with a pair of scissors and hacked off his head with a hunting knife.
An Internet video showed millions a man, – allegedly Vince Weiguang Li – parading up and down inside the bus, holding a severed head and even eating body parts.
A few people immediately described the murder as evidence of the continuing breakdown of moral standards in our civilization.
Fred Phelp’s Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas – a church whose social views make “rabid” sound like a term of endearment – went further. It declared that the murder was God’s judgement on Canada’s liberal views on abortion, homosexuality, and adultery.
Provincial court Judge Michel Chartier ordered a psychiatric examination to determine if Li is capable of standing trial.
I won’t offer any excuses for the murderer’s behavior. I know nothing about his childhood, his upbringing, his health...
But I do find a trace of truth in Fred Phelps’ accusation. The increasing frequency of irrational violence in our society may have some roots in our history of moral teachings.
But not in the simplistic way he thinks it does.
Bear with me on this.
For centuries, the Christian church taught a range of moral precepts and commands. People obeyed – at least partly because over them all hung the ultimate “big stick,” eternal punishment in hell.
Desperately hungry people would risk execution to steal a loaf of bread. At best, they might get away with it; at worst, hanging or beheading was a quicker way to die than starvation.
But hell – hell was forever. And while one might weasel out of human justice, there was no evading God’s judgement. As recently as 1925, the United Church of Canada’s official constitution stated that the “finally impenitent shall go away into eternal punishment” from which not even a merciful God could rescue them.
The threat of hell kept people in line.
But Li told his first court hearing, “Please kill me.” Clearly, he saw neither death nor whatever might lie beyond death as a deterrent.
I wonder if the church depended for too long on a single deterrent. It worked when people believed in a heaven up there in the sky, and a hell somewhere underground.
But space travel has found no streets of solid gold floating on fluffy clouds. And deep drilling below the earth’s surface has found oil and minerals, but no subterranean world where miscreants writhe in endless agony.
Skepticism has replaced unquestioning belief.
At various times, theologians have propounded doctrines that emphasized the effects of sin on this present life. But those arguments seemed more academic, less effective with unlearned people, than fear of a fiery hell. So they were largely ignored.
The finest arrows are useless, if a bow has only a single string, and that string breaks.
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Good Stuff – Chuck Rinkel of Johnston, Iowa sent a joke that struck me as perhaps not a joke about a greedy child but a story of trust and grace. You decide what it is.
A little girl and her father were in the grocery store shopping. When they went to check out the owner told the little girl that she had been so good that she should reach in the candy jar and help herself.
"No, thank you," she said.
Again, the store owner told her to help herself again and she replied, "No, thank you," so softly that he could hardly hear her. He urged her a third time and she said no very quietly a third time.
"She is very shy," said her father. At this point the grocer reached in the candy jar and took a handful of candy and put it in the girl’s little apron pocket.
When they got outside, the father told his daughter that she could have reached into the jar for the candy.
"Yes,” said the child, “but his hand is bigger."
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Gerry McBride of Calgary, Alberta saw this in a recent bulletin.
Urgent request for Habitat for Humanity. Every 2nd Wednesday of the month is Untied Church worker day for Habitat for Humanity and we appreciate all volunteers.
Says Gerry, “I guess you have to get them loose before they can work.”
Richard Glover of Waitakere, New Zealand writes: “For the story of Joseph, Jacob and Rueben and Joseph being sold into captivity, the women who were organizing the service engaged three of our men folk to tell the story from each character's point of view. [To which someone made the comment:] "The use of the three men in the women's service was appropriate as all three had well developed male parts"
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. Richard Bach via Stephani Keer
By serving others and putting others' needs before oneself, only then can we truly impact the world with change. Abraham Lincoln via Roger Smith
There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google.
Church billboard, via Andrea Stewart
Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond where you were.
Sherie Carter-Scott via Theo Reiner
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We Get Letters – Phil Gilman of Dunnellon, Florida, found this “Commuters Hymn” somewhere. It’s meant to be sung to the tune St. Anne, most commonly used with “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.
Cars in an ever-flowing streambear all our kin away;they rise before the sun comes upand leave at break of day.The roads are jammed with angry folkwhose hands in gesture play;they drive not knowing where they are,nor what they've seen today.They finally arrive at work,with coffee break delay;they think of nothing but their carsand yearn to drive away.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “nude piano!”)
Evelyn McLachlan says this came to her via a circuitous route, but originated with the Missouri School Music Newsletter, collected by Harold Dunn. I thought this would be a good time to share this, since it’s the time when choirs all over the northern half of this planet are gearing up for the next season.
* A harp is a nude piano
* Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music.
* Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you had better not try to sing.
* A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.
* Henry Purcell is a well-known composer few people have ever heard of.
* Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel.
* I know what a sextet is but I had rather not say.
* Morris dancing is a country survival from times when people were happy.
* Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago.
* Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the Hatfields and McCoys.
* My very best liked piece of music is the Bronze Lullaby.
* When electric currents go through them, guitars start making sounds. So would anybody.
* Question: What are kettledrums called? Answer: Kettle drums.
* Questions: Is the saxophone a brass or a woodwind instrument. Answer: Yes.
* For some reason, they always put a treble clef in front of every line of flute music. You just watch.
* I can't reach the brakes on this piano!
* The main trouble with a French horn is that it's too tangled up.
* Anyone who can read all the instrument notes at the same time gets to be the conductor.
* The most dangerous part about playing cymbals is near the nose.
* Tubas are a bit too much.
* It is easy to teach anyone to play the maracas. Just grip the neck and shake him in rhythm.
* Just about any animal skin can be stretched over a frame to make a pleasant sound once the animal is removed.
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Bottom of the Barrel – This via Jim Taylor. It’s been around before, but it’s kind of a classic and bears repeating. The names of the places (including the last one) can be changed to fit your own proclivities.
An American chap decided to write a book about famous churches around the world.
So he bought a plane ticket and took a trip to Orlando , thinking that he would start by working his way across the USA from South to North.
On his first day he was inside a church taking photographs when he noticed a golden telephone mounted on the wall with a sign that read '$10,000 per call'.
Being intrigued, he asked a clergy person who was strolling by what the telephone was used for.
The clergy replied that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 you could talk to God.
The writer thanked the clergy and went along his way.
Next stop was in Atlanta . There, at a very large cathedral, he saw the same golden telephone with the same sign under it.
He wondered if this was the same kind of telephone he saw in Orlando and he asked a nearby clergy person what its purpose was.
She told him that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 he could talk to God.
“O.K., thank you,” said the photographer.
He then traveled to Indianapolis , Washington DC , Philadelphia , Boston and New York.
In every church he saw the same golden telephone with the same '$10,000 per call' sign under it.
Our writer, upon leaving Vermont decided to travel up to Canada to see if Canadians had the same phone.
He arrived in Canada , and again, in the first church he entered, there was the same golden telephone, but this time the sign under it read '40 cents per call.'
The writer was surprised so he asked the clergy about the sign. 'Reverend, I've traveled all over the US and I've seen this same golden telephone in many churches. I'm told that it is a direct line to Heaven, but in the US the price was $10,000 per call. Why is it so cheap here?'
The clergy smiled and answered, “You're in Canada now, son. It's a local call!”
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-08-24
August 24, 2008
I WILL GO
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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The new shape of the Story Lectionary is visible below. Jim and I hope it will prove more useful to those who preach and more interesting to those who simply read.
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The Story – strength from fire
Rumors – the birth of a prophet
Soft Edges – ultimate deterrents
Good Stuff – a joke or a story of grace
Bloopers – well developed parts
We Get Letters – commuters hymn
Mirabile Dictu! – a nude piano
Bottom of the Barrel – a phone call to God
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – This from Jim Beinke of Los Alamos, New Mexico.
A Sunday school teacher said to her children, "We have been earning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But, there is a higher power. Can anybody tell me what it is?”
A small hand shot up. “Aces!” said the child.
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The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, August 31st, which is the 16th Sunday after Pentecost.
Exodus 3:1-15 – It’s hard to choose, when the RCL offers two compelling stories on the same Sunday. We have a choice between Jesus anticipating his death and resurrection, and Moses experiencing his birth, which was also a kind of resurrection.
Because I prefer life to death, I’d go with the burning bush.
But how does one make real, concrete, palpable, a fire that doesn’t consume and destroy? It’s as difficult as walking on water. You can’t even light a fire in most churches without setting off smoke alarms and sprinkler systems!
So I think I’d go for a different metaphor entirely – the recent Olympic games. Visually, I could use news photos enlarged, track spikes, T-shirts...
The Olympic athletes had a fire burning inside them. It drove them into ceaseless training, personal sacrifice, and total commitment. Yet it does not destroy them (unless the lust for gold leads them to cheat through drugs, etc.) but empowers them. Win or lose, they come out of their fire stronger than they went in.
The same attributes would apply to the refiner’s fire (Malachi 3:2), the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:27), the fire in Jeremiah’s bones (20:6), and the flames of Pentecost (Acts 2:3).
Moses encountered the burning bush a stammering coward, running away from the consequences of his actions. He came out capable of leading his people to freedom.
Jim Taylor
This is one of the key stories in the Hebrew Bible. It is the legend of Moses encountering God, the central story in the Jewish tradition. And since the Gospel writers often linked Jesus with Moses, central to the Christian tradition as well.
We often assume that it is only folks in the Bible and a few modern saints who encounter God. The truth is that many folks have experienced moments of holiness, but they either don’t notice, or are too embarrassed to talk about it. “People will think I’ve lost it,” a friend told me not long ago after relating an experience of the holy.
I’ve had many experiences of God – some of them quite momentary and small, such as last week when I was walking along the beach photographing shells and rocks. The iridescent glow in an open shell held me in a tiny moment of holiness.
About 14 years ago, an experience of the real, palpable presence of God shuddered through my whole body. It came as I wept at the bedside of my elder brother Randy, holding his hand as he moved toward his death, while in my other hand I held a snapshot of Jake, my brand new grandson.
There is little I can say in words to describe that event, because the sense of God’s full presence went far beyond anything words can describe.
So it seems to me the power of the story of Moses and his encounter with God comes to us as a catalyst to help us remember those moments when we were aware, fully aware, of a power and a presence that is always with us.
Ralph Milton
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
God's Saving Power
Our team won gold at the Olympics; our candidate wins the election; our author wins the Pulitzer Prize – and we act as if we had something to do with it.
1 Here they come!
We rise to our feet –
we give them a standing ovation.
In the coffee shop, in the shopping mall, in the churches,
we discuss their wonderful deeds.
2 We organize a parade down Main Street in their honor;
we proclaim their greatness in every newspaper and broadcast.
3 They make us proud of ourselves.
4 We press close around them;
we collect their autographs.
5 For they have performed miracles;
they have done more than we dreamed they could.
6 We share in their fame–
we bask in their glory
for we come from the same roots.
16 We have waited a long time for this recognition;
we deserve every delicious moment of it.
Roberta Bondar spent years in obscurity, training to be an astronaut. After her mission, she became an instant celebrity.
17 We have had our hopes raised before.
We invested our faith in saviors.
We put them on pedestals, but they let us down;
they had clay feet.
We turned on them;
18 like jackals, we tore their reputations apart.
19 But one of them became famous, after all.
20 We praised her to the heavens;
at luncheons and dinners, we sat her in the place of honor.
21 We elected her to high office;
she endorsed luxury cars on television.
22 She was invited to talk to students in school assemblies;
in our eyes, she could do nothing wrong.
45 She brought us great honor.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Romans 12:9-21 – This is Paul’s list of things to do and not do, or perhaps more correctly, a way to be. These injunctions come right out of the Hebrew Torah, and are not as radical as Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus tells us not to even think about some of these things.
This list might be useful, if we use it as a check-list to take a close look at our own values. But it would require some pretty powerful honesty that many of us would find hard to muster.
Matthew 16:21-28 – Poor Peter. In verse 17 he was being praised for having recognized Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, the Christ. Now he’s getting roasted for a limited understanding of what that Messiah is.
Peter’s story is also our story in many cases. Through years of faithful church involvement, through a new sense of what the Gospel is all about, or through an experience of the living God, we recognize the presence of God in our lives.
That’s not the end of the journey. It’s beginning. For Moses, it was the beginning of a saga that would go on for more than 40 years. For Peter, it was the beginning of a ministry that would take him all over the known world.
For each of us, that moment of recognition – of realization – that theophany – is the beginning of a journey through which we will learn to know God – but always with the painful beauty of knowing the unknowable.
For a children’s version of Moses’ theophany, see “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 194. A story based on the Matthew passage is on page 196.
There are children’s stories for every Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary, in “The Lectionary Story Bible,” by yours truly. The marvellous illustrations are by Margaret Kyle. There’s at least one story for each Sunday, usually two, and occasionally three. Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors –
The story of...
Moses
"....you are standing on holy ground."
from “Is This Your Idea of a Good Time, God?”
www.woodlakebooks.com
Moses kicked the dry and rocky rubble. He hated the desert. He hated Midian where he lived in exile. He hated the sheep he cared for, sheep that amazed and amused him with their stupidity.
"Ha!" snorted Moses. "I'm amazed and amused by my own stupidity."
A moment of recklessness had brought him to this wilderness. An Israelite slave abused by an Egyptian overseer. In a flash of anger Moses killed the overseer. Then ran into the desert like a hunted coyote.
Moses hated this dry and lifeless place. He wanted so desperately to be back in Egypt, in the palace, eating well-cooked food, sipping well-aged wine, exchanging well-phrased witticisms with well-dressed courtiers.
But here he was in this God forsaken desert. No one to talk to but the half-witted sheep. Nothing to eat except half-cooked mutton. Nothing to drink except lukewarm water.
Moses felt trapped in this wilderness. He felt trapped by Zipporah his wife. He felt trapped by the son he had fathered and named Gershom, which means, "I have become an alien in a foreign land." For a moment, he hated his wife, his son. Moses hated everything.
There in the searing desert, Moses wept for all that was lost to him, the tears drying instantly in the heat.
His earliest years had been spent with his mother, Jacobed, who told Moses the ancient stories of a chosen people and planted the seeds of faith in a God who cared.
Then he had been taken to live with his adoptive mother in the Pharaoh's palace. There the noxious weeds of ambition, pride, envy and greed had all but choked the tiny seedlings of faith planted by his mother.
Now in the heat of the desert sun, Moses struggled to keep those seedlings alive. At night he would fanaticize a triumphant return to the lush Nile valley – to all his friends in Pharaoh's court. But now, in the glaring brightness of noonday he could only think of his family, his people, struggling to make bricks for the ambitious, cruel Pharaoh.
At first Moses tried not to think of his family. He tried not to think of the Israelites. "They're slaves," he muttered. "But so what? They do all right if they're not lazy. They get enough to eat. Anyway, it’s none of my business. If I'd realized that sooner, I'd still be in Pharaoh's court."
But the thought wouldn't go away. The seeds of his Israelite past were well planted. The seeds of his mother's stories, of a sister who had risked her life. And the seeds grew well in the heat of his anger.
"Why?" Moses yelled out to no one in particular. Or maybe to God. "Why does it have to be like this? Why do you let my people be slaves? Why don't you do something?"
The sheep scampered away at his outburst. There was no other response.
In the tent, at night, Moses felt some comfort. Here in the tent, he loved Zipporah and his son.
Moses snuggled closer to Zipporah and tugged the blanket over them against the cold. He remembered Zipporah pregnant with Gershom, how he felt the child grow and move in her womb as he lay close to her in the night.
As he drifted off to sleep, Moses half-imagined that he too was pregnant with... with something... something God had seeded. He dozed and the fantasy, or dream became a memory of twins in a womb, of Esau and Jacob struggling, each trying to dominate the other. Now Moses was both of them, and one twin was Moses the ambitious courtier and the other was Moses the angry slave. And both were struggling toward birth. And one would die in the struggle and the other would be born. Moses started awake, his hand on his own belly.
The dream was in his mind the next morning. And the next. He almost felt an ache in his belly. Or was it pleasure?
It was noon. The familiar sun was punishing the earth. Moses pulled his cloak around his head against the heat. A crackle broke the stillness. Moses turned. A small bush on fire. Not unusual in this heat, but then he noticed that the bush was not consumed. It burned and burned, and Moses went to have a look.
"Moses!" The voice was gentle, quiet, strong.
He stopped. Afraid.
"Don't come any closer, Moses," said the voice. "And take off your shoes. The place where you are standing is holy ground."
Quickly, Moses fumbled off his sandals. The hot rubble burned his feet. He gasped at the pain of it as a woman gasps for breath in labor.
"Moses! I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying at the hands of the slave masters. Moses, I will bring my people out of Egypt. You will go down to Pharaoh and bring them out of slavery and into a land that I will show you."
"But who am I?" said Moses. "I don't know anything about this. I'm just a shepherd. Why me?"
"Moses!" said the voice. "I am with you now. I will be with you then. You will bring my people out of Egypt."
Moses struggled to find his breath. This, he knew, was the moment he had dreaded and longed for. Now was the choice, the holy, terrifying moment.
The universe of human soul struggled in the pangs of birth, struggled forward, held back, groaned itself to birth and death. All that was, held Moses back. All that might be, pushed him on.
One last breath shuddered, rattled through his body.
Death. And peace.
The barely whispered words. "I will go." Moses turned and faced the land where he was born.
There in the desert, the life-destroying desert, a midwife God had loved a prophet into birth.
"Go down, Moses,
way down in Egypt land.
Tell old Pharaoh,
to let my people go."
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Ultimate Deterrents
Tim McLean’s death on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba, at the end of July, haunts me. A complete stranger stabbed him repeatedly in the neck with a pair of scissors and hacked off his head with a hunting knife.
An Internet video showed millions a man, – allegedly Vince Weiguang Li – parading up and down inside the bus, holding a severed head and even eating body parts.
A few people immediately described the murder as evidence of the continuing breakdown of moral standards in our civilization.
Fred Phelp’s Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas – a church whose social views make “rabid” sound like a term of endearment – went further. It declared that the murder was God’s judgement on Canada’s liberal views on abortion, homosexuality, and adultery.
Provincial court Judge Michel Chartier ordered a psychiatric examination to determine if Li is capable of standing trial.
I won’t offer any excuses for the murderer’s behavior. I know nothing about his childhood, his upbringing, his health...
But I do find a trace of truth in Fred Phelps’ accusation. The increasing frequency of irrational violence in our society may have some roots in our history of moral teachings.
But not in the simplistic way he thinks it does.
Bear with me on this.
For centuries, the Christian church taught a range of moral precepts and commands. People obeyed – at least partly because over them all hung the ultimate “big stick,” eternal punishment in hell.
Desperately hungry people would risk execution to steal a loaf of bread. At best, they might get away with it; at worst, hanging or beheading was a quicker way to die than starvation.
But hell – hell was forever. And while one might weasel out of human justice, there was no evading God’s judgement. As recently as 1925, the United Church of Canada’s official constitution stated that the “finally impenitent shall go away into eternal punishment” from which not even a merciful God could rescue them.
The threat of hell kept people in line.
But Li told his first court hearing, “Please kill me.” Clearly, he saw neither death nor whatever might lie beyond death as a deterrent.
I wonder if the church depended for too long on a single deterrent. It worked when people believed in a heaven up there in the sky, and a hell somewhere underground.
But space travel has found no streets of solid gold floating on fluffy clouds. And deep drilling below the earth’s surface has found oil and minerals, but no subterranean world where miscreants writhe in endless agony.
Skepticism has replaced unquestioning belief.
At various times, theologians have propounded doctrines that emphasized the effects of sin on this present life. But those arguments seemed more academic, less effective with unlearned people, than fear of a fiery hell. So they were largely ignored.
The finest arrows are useless, if a bow has only a single string, and that string breaks.
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Good Stuff – Chuck Rinkel of Johnston, Iowa sent a joke that struck me as perhaps not a joke about a greedy child but a story of trust and grace. You decide what it is.
A little girl and her father were in the grocery store shopping. When they went to check out the owner told the little girl that she had been so good that she should reach in the candy jar and help herself.
"No, thank you," she said.
Again, the store owner told her to help herself again and she replied, "No, thank you," so softly that he could hardly hear her. He urged her a third time and she said no very quietly a third time.
"She is very shy," said her father. At this point the grocer reached in the candy jar and took a handful of candy and put it in the girl’s little apron pocket.
When they got outside, the father told his daughter that she could have reached into the jar for the candy.
"Yes,” said the child, “but his hand is bigger."
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Gerry McBride of Calgary, Alberta saw this in a recent bulletin.
Urgent request for Habitat for Humanity. Every 2nd Wednesday of the month is Untied Church worker day for Habitat for Humanity and we appreciate all volunteers.
Says Gerry, “I guess you have to get them loose before they can work.”
Richard Glover of Waitakere, New Zealand writes: “For the story of Joseph, Jacob and Rueben and Joseph being sold into captivity, the women who were organizing the service engaged three of our men folk to tell the story from each character's point of view. [To which someone made the comment:] "The use of the three men in the women's service was appropriate as all three had well developed male parts"
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. Richard Bach via Stephani Keer
By serving others and putting others' needs before oneself, only then can we truly impact the world with change. Abraham Lincoln via Roger Smith
There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google.
Church billboard, via Andrea Stewart
Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond where you were.
Sherie Carter-Scott via Theo Reiner
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We Get Letters – Phil Gilman of Dunnellon, Florida, found this “Commuters Hymn” somewhere. It’s meant to be sung to the tune St. Anne, most commonly used with “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.
Cars in an ever-flowing streambear all our kin away;they rise before the sun comes upand leave at break of day.The roads are jammed with angry folkwhose hands in gesture play;they drive not knowing where they are,nor what they've seen today.They finally arrive at work,with coffee break delay;they think of nothing but their carsand yearn to drive away.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “nude piano!”)
Evelyn McLachlan says this came to her via a circuitous route, but originated with the Missouri School Music Newsletter, collected by Harold Dunn. I thought this would be a good time to share this, since it’s the time when choirs all over the northern half of this planet are gearing up for the next season.
* A harp is a nude piano
* Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music.
* Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you had better not try to sing.
* A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.
* Henry Purcell is a well-known composer few people have ever heard of.
* Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel.
* I know what a sextet is but I had rather not say.
* Morris dancing is a country survival from times when people were happy.
* Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago.
* Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the Hatfields and McCoys.
* My very best liked piece of music is the Bronze Lullaby.
* When electric currents go through them, guitars start making sounds. So would anybody.
* Question: What are kettledrums called? Answer: Kettle drums.
* Questions: Is the saxophone a brass or a woodwind instrument. Answer: Yes.
* For some reason, they always put a treble clef in front of every line of flute music. You just watch.
* I can't reach the brakes on this piano!
* The main trouble with a French horn is that it's too tangled up.
* Anyone who can read all the instrument notes at the same time gets to be the conductor.
* The most dangerous part about playing cymbals is near the nose.
* Tubas are a bit too much.
* It is easy to teach anyone to play the maracas. Just grip the neck and shake him in rhythm.
* Just about any animal skin can be stretched over a frame to make a pleasant sound once the animal is removed.
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Bottom of the Barrel – This via Jim Taylor. It’s been around before, but it’s kind of a classic and bears repeating. The names of the places (including the last one) can be changed to fit your own proclivities.
An American chap decided to write a book about famous churches around the world.
So he bought a plane ticket and took a trip to Orlando , thinking that he would start by working his way across the USA from South to North.
On his first day he was inside a church taking photographs when he noticed a golden telephone mounted on the wall with a sign that read '$10,000 per call'.
Being intrigued, he asked a clergy person who was strolling by what the telephone was used for.
The clergy replied that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 you could talk to God.
The writer thanked the clergy and went along his way.
Next stop was in Atlanta . There, at a very large cathedral, he saw the same golden telephone with the same sign under it.
He wondered if this was the same kind of telephone he saw in Orlando and he asked a nearby clergy person what its purpose was.
She told him that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 he could talk to God.
“O.K., thank you,” said the photographer.
He then traveled to Indianapolis , Washington DC , Philadelphia , Boston and New York.
In every church he saw the same golden telephone with the same '$10,000 per call' sign under it.
Our writer, upon leaving Vermont decided to travel up to Canada to see if Canadians had the same phone.
He arrived in Canada , and again, in the first church he entered, there was the same golden telephone, but this time the sign under it read '40 cents per call.'
The writer was surprised so he asked the clergy about the sign. 'Reverend, I've traveled all over the US and I've seen this same golden telephone in many churches. I'm told that it is a direct line to Heaven, but in the US the price was $10,000 per call. Why is it so cheap here?'
The clergy smiled and answered, “You're in Canada now, son. It's a local call!”
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Monday, August 18, 2008
Preaching Materials for August 24th
R U M O R S # 515
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-08-17
August 17, 2008
THE REVISED COMMON “STORY” LECTIONARY
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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Please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list. http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
I post each issue of Rumors on that blog so that you can access it any time. And if an issue of Rumors goes missing, you can go and find it there.
Thanks.
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Revised Common Lectionary – The story version
Rumors – Pharaoh’s daughter
Soft Edges –
Good Stuff – a beautiful explanation of death
Bloopers – please be pleasant
We Get Letters – hard forgiveness
Mirabile Dictu! – is the minister a monkey?
Bottom of the Barrel – Hugh and only Hugh
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – A ten-year-old, under the tutelage of her grandmother, was becoming quite knowledgeable about the Bible. Then one day she floored her grandmother by asking, "Which Virgin was the mother of Jesus – the Virgin Mary or the King James Virgin?"
Which reminds me of the minister who wondered a bride in a white dress (originally a symbol of virginity) being married in church, might be known as “The Revised Standard Virgin?”
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Story Lectionary – There are times in every life when we need to admit we were wrong.
The Story Lectionary, dreamed and designed by the two of us, has not had the impact we had hoped. Most people like the idea. But only a few enthusiastic souls are using it. Very few.
Mainly, we underestimated the momentum of the Revised Common Lectionary and the huge corpus of supportive material that has developed around it. Clergy simply do not have the extra time it takes to develop good story sermons apart from those resources.
We also underestimated the time and energy it takes the two of us to maintain such a resource. And there are personal and family health issues. We are both getting older.
But we are still committed to story-telling as the most effective way of reaching people with God’s good news. So we will continue the story-lectionary project, but it will be based on the Revised Common Lectionary. The material will all be in Rumors. The web site will be gone as will the on-line discussion group.
In the future, each issue of Rumors will focus on the story values that are there in the RCL, with both of us contributing thoughts that we hope will be helpful to preachers. We may suggest broadening the lection to include more of the story. Occasionally when there simply is no story value in all four readings, we will suggest an alternate – perhaps a story that is not in the lectionary at all.
Many of you had your hopes raised by the Story Lectionary concept. To you we apologize. It is our hope that focusing on the story values in the RCL will make the material more practically useful to more of you.
And thanks to all for your patience and encouragement.
Jim Taylor and Ralph Milton
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary that you may hear in church this coming Sunday, August 24th, which is the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16 [21].
Exodus 1:8-2:10 – The story
Don’t get hung up on technical questions such as whether there were only three midwives in all of Egypt, and did they really report directly to Pharaoh. This is a legend, and legends seldom pay much attention to such details.
This legend has things to say to us, if we allow ourselves to get inside the story. I find some powerful ideas stirring inside me about the courageous work of women who are normally powerless.
Moses would not have survived without five strong women: the two midwives, his mother, his sister and Pharaoh’s daughter.
And we often find ourselves with a “new king who did not know Joseph.” A new boss is hired, a new political party is in power, a good friend moves or gets married. Being retired from many church involvements, I often find myself standing on the sidelines realizing that the people running things now have no idea who I am. Which is the way it needs to be, even though my mind needs to talk to my ego about this quite often.
There are a number of stories within this story that could be used. There’s the brave midwives, without whom Moses and others would not have been. There’s the fierce, inventive love of his mother and his sister Miriam.
The character in this legend that I find most interesting is Pharaoh’s daughter. To get my head around who she was, I wrote an “aggada,” which you will find below and which you are free to use in your worship.
The entire Moses saga, as indeed much of Bible, is about the powerless working with faith and courage, confronting the domination systems in their world. Psalm 124 below, either in Jim’s paraphrase or in the original, is on that theme. Indeed the gospel reading resonates with a deep, quiet humor, as it tells of an illiterate fisherman being appointed, in the view of the Roman church at least, to be the head of the church.
Ralph Milton
When I read the story of Moses floating down the river, to be adopted into a different racial and cultural family, my mind can’t help seeing parallels. My own two grandchildren are both interracial adoptions, for example. I’d want to make a connection to Ephesians 1:5, “He destined us for adoption...” and 2:19, “So you are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens, members of the household...”
The river is also a powerful symbol. I think of Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim” in which the hero begins a new life crawling out of a river onto the bank. I remember that early Christians came out of the water to begin their new lives. I wonder if we all recognize, at some cellular level, that we too came out of the water – the ocean, the womb...
Perhaps this story should be told on a riverbank, standing waist-deep in the water!
But since that’s impossible in most of our sterile sanctuaries, I would focus on the theme of new life, new beginnings, new possibilities. A baptism would be wonderful. But lacking that, I might hand out eggs. Uncooked. To pass around. A kind of egg-and-spoon relay, in church, that physically reminds people of the fragility and responsibility of new life. And I would ask whose fragile soul YOU are adopting. Who gets a better chance, because of you?
……………………………………………..Jim Taylor
Psalm 124 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 The odds were stacked against us from the beginning.
2 The great corporations strung us a good line
about caring for us, about bringing prosperity.
But they really meant prosperity for themselves.
When the profits looked better somewhere else,
they abandoned us. They always do.
3 The powerful nations promised us freedom;
they loaned us millions for a fresh start.
now we are enslaved by our debt.
They will not free us.
4 The arms makers sold us weapons
to protect ourselves against our neighbors.
They sold weapons to our neighbors,
to protect themselves against us.
5 Now our former friends are a threat.
We need more, and more, and more.
6 The only one not in this for private gain is God.
7 If we have retained any faith in human nature,
in justice, in our own identity,
8 it is because of God.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Romans 12:1-8 – I don’t always understand what Paul is writing about, but this time I think he comes through loud and clear. This is an inspired metaphor of the church as the body of Christ. And he shines that metaphor in various ways. We present our bodies “as a living sacrifice,” something that is beautiful and good and holy which we can return to God.
But the metaphor works in another direction as well. Each of us have different gifts, but every gift is needed as part of God’s work, just as all four women in that Moses story offered their gifts – without which there would have been no story. It would be good to use this passage to reflect on our own gifts and how we can use them as part of God’s universal church.
Matthew 16:13-20 – This passage is one of the foundations of the Roman Catholic Church and other apostolic churches which teach that Jesus invested the leadership of the church in Peter who became the first bishop, and that this line of succession follows down through to present-day bishops.
Other denominations see this as Jesus investing leadership of the church in Peter, yes, but others as well. Peter was a very ordinary person and often not very bright or courageous. He had his shortcomings, as did Moses, who apparently had trouble speaking in public. But God’s call to Peter and Moses is like the call to all of us ordinary people struggling to live God’s way in a complicated world.
All of us are called to ‘bind and to loose?’ Each one of us holds the keys to the kingdom.
A children’s story, “Miriam Saves Her Brother,” based on Exodus 1 & 2, can be found in the “Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 186. A story called “Simon Becomes Peter,” based on the Matthew passage, may be found on page 189.
“The Lectionary Story Bible,” in three volumes, is probably the largest collection of children’s Bible stories ever undertaken. Certainly it’s the largest collection of such stories based on the Revised Common Lectionary. Volumes “Year A” and “Year B” are published and available. “Year C” will be published next spring.
If you don’t already own these books, click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – Pharaoh's Daughter
"...I wish I could hear my father sing again."
An Aggada based on Exodus 2:1-10
ÓRalph Milton
from Is This Your Idea of a Good Time, God?
Wood Lake Books
I don't think my father wanted to be a Pharaoh. Not if he'd had a choice. He might have been a musician. Sometimes, when he would give a banquet, father would bring the best musicians in all Egypt to entertain. And I could tell that father loved the music while he disliked the stuffed shirts he invited to the banquet. I remember father singing in the hallways sometimes, years ago when I was just a child, before he was a Pharaoh. Once, he even sang to me, a strong and tender song.
I haven't heard him sing for years. They say the head that wears a crown can never sleep too well, and those who cannot sleep will never sing. Father feels such pressure. I know he does. I can see the tiny muscles just below his ears that move when he's afraid.
Those stuffed shirts who run my father's government are feeling pressure from the hordes of Hebrews. I overheard my father and some other men discuss the problem once. "Kick the whole bunch out," one man said.
"No," said another. "Who would make our bricks? Who would tend our fields? We need the Hebrews. We just don't need so many. What we need is population control."
Because my father is the Pharaoh, he hardly ever takes his meals with us. He's much too busy. Except every month or two we have a "family time" and we eat a hurried meal together. Father talks to us. We don't talk to father and he hardly looks at us.
"Do you know how strong those Hebrew women are?" he asked us once, not wanting or expecting any answer. "Why, I ordered all the midwives to destroy the male babies just as soon as they are born, but they tell me those Hebrew women just take an hour away from their work, pop out the babies, and go back to work. They just pop them out, and the midwives aren't even needed." Father laughed dryly at his own humor. "They just pop them out."
I glanced up at my mother then, and she was laughing too, but I could tell it wasn't at my father's humor. "He knows nothing," she said later. "He's never seen a baby born."
"But why would father want those babies killed? Is my own father really such a beast?"
"He is a Pharaoh first and always, and a father only sometimes."
Two weeks latter, I was bathing in the Nile, enjoying the cool, fresh water on my body, when Lita, one of my servants pointed to a basket in the reeds nearby.
"Bring it to me!"
"It's a baby!" said Lita as she pushed the basket to me. "It's a beautiful Hebrew baby. My mother is a midwife. She told me soldiers throw the Hebrew baby boys into the river now."
"So this is a child my brave father fears." I picked the baby up into my arms and held him close. "My father will not hurt you," I said.
The baby cried a little. Then it smiled and tried to suck my finger.
"You will start a rumor," I said to Lita. It was a sudden inspiration, and if I'd stopped to think I would not have said it. "You will whisper in the corridors of the palace that I have been seduced by Scrakum, yes Scrakum, the Prime Minister's son. He's such a stuffed shirt. And this is our child."
Lita grinned. "This is against the Pharaoh's law! But I will help you save the child."
"My father's law, to have these babies killed, is wrong, Lita. Women cannot fight the law, but we can resist."
It took a month to get an audience with my own father. "Five minutes. No more," said his secretary, smirking at the child in my arms.
"Yes?" said father in his official Pharaoh voice.
"This baby," I said quietly. "You have heard perhaps that it belongs to Scrakum."
"I have heard, Bithia.* I am making arrangements for you to be part of Scrakum's harem. He doesn't want you for a wife. In fact, he claims the child is not his but he is willing to acknowledge it for my sake. All the palace women say the baby looks like Scrakum."
I looked my father in the eye. "The child is Hebrew," I said firmly.
I could see the fear that ran across my father's face. He sensed immediately the derisive laughter in the corridors if it were know that his own daughter had a baby by a Hebrew slave. The tiny muscles near his ears twitched. He took a long, deep drink of wine.
I had been afraid when I came in the room. Now my fear was gone. "I will tell no one, father. I will go join Scrakum's harem, even though he is a pompous ass. But this is one Hebrew child that I will guard with my whole life, and you will not touch him with your wickedness."
"Get out of here!" He meant it to sound hard and firm, but halfway through his Pharaoh's voice croaked in fear.
And then I pitied him. I pitied him and loved him. And how I wish that I could hear my father sing again.
* In ancient Jewish Midrash, Pharoah’s daughter was named Bithia.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
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Good Stuff – This from Bob Bates of Florence, Massachusetts.
A Beautiful Explanation of Death
A sick man turned to his doctor as he was preparing to leave the examination room. "Doctor,” he said. “I am afraid to die. Tell me what lies on the other side."
"I don't know," said the doctor, very quietly.
"You don't know? You, a Christian man, do not know what is on the other side?"
The doctor was holding the handle of the door. From the other side came a sound of scratching and whining. As he opened the door, a dog sprang into the room and leaped on him with an eager show of gladness.
Turning to the patient, the doctor said, "Did you notice my dog? He's never been in this room before. He didn't know what was inside. He knew nothing except that I was here, and when the door opened, he sprang in without fear. I know little of what is on the other side of death, but I do know one thing. I know my loving God is there and that is enough."
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff –
* A hymn: There is a Bomb in Gilead
* There was an organist, who (according to the bulletin) began the service in an "Introit" and concluded with a "Detroit."
* There will be a meeting of the men’s group next Tuesday. We hope the men will try to be pleasant.
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – What a [person] needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.
Charles Dudley Warner
In some churches there is more commotion and emotion than devotion.
source unknown
God can do wonders with a broken heart, if you give God all the pieces.
source unknown
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We Get Letters – This from Peggy Neufeldt in Ponoka, Alberta. It would make a great sermon illustration about how it is really hard to forgive people sometimes.
Bill, Jim and Scott were at a convention together and were sharing a large suite on the top of a 75-story skyscraper.
After a long day of meetings, they were shocked to hear that the elevators in their hotel were broken and they would have to climb 75 flights of stairs to get to their room.
Bill said to Jim and Scott, "Let's break the monotony of this unpleasant task by concentrating on something interesting. I'll tell jokes for 25 flights, Jim can sing songs for the next 25 flights and Scott can tell sad stories for the rest of the way."
At the 26th floor, Bill stopped telling jokes and Jim began to sing. At the 51st floor Jim stopped singing and Scott began to tell sad stories.
"I will tell my saddest story first," he said. "I left the room key in the car!"
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Is the minister a monkey?!”
This is from years ago, probably 15 or 20, and it has been on Rumors at least once before. But it is too good not to share again.
Because it really happened. This letter was sent on the letterhead of the Anglican Church of Canada to the director of the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center. Dear Dr. Hearn:Thank you for your letter of December 4 addressed to Dr. George Cram of the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund in which you seek information for your International Directory of Primatology.
I should perhaps inform you that the term 'primate' in our context refers to the senior archbishop and chief pastor of the Anglican Church of Canada. The Relief and Development Fund over which he presides is an agency for the alleviation of global poverty and hunger on behalf of Anglican Christians in this country.
I think the primates in your study are perhaps of a different species. While it is true that our primate occasionally enjoys bananas, I have never seen him walk with his knuckles on the ground or scratch himself publicly under the armpits. He does have three children, but this is a far cry from 'breeding colonies of primates” as your research project mentions.
Like you we do not import our primates from the wild, however. They are elected from among the bishops of our church. This is occasionally a cause of similar, though arcane, comment. The subject of primate biology might be of great importance in your field but, alas, not so in ours. There are a mere 28 Anglican primates in the whole world. They are all males, of course, but so far we have had no problems with reproduction. They include such distinguished persons as the Most Reverend and Right Honourable George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Capetown, South Africa. Have you sent letters to them? Most importantly, have they responded? They can, I believe, all read and write by themselves so perhaps this might distort your data.
Thank you for writing. I wonder if your extremely efficient database might need just a little refining? Kindest Regards, The Reverend Michael Ingham Principal Secretary to the Primate
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Bottom of the Barrel – Did you hear about the Buddhist monk who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.
Did you hear about the friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise the funds?
Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. He asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of business. They ignored her too.
So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop.
Terrified, they did so – thereby proving . . . (Are you ready for this???? Wait for it!!!) . . .that Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-08-17
August 17, 2008
THE REVISED COMMON “STORY” LECTIONARY
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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Please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list. http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
I post each issue of Rumors on that blog so that you can access it any time. And if an issue of Rumors goes missing, you can go and find it there.
Thanks.
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Revised Common Lectionary – The story version
Rumors – Pharaoh’s daughter
Soft Edges –
Good Stuff – a beautiful explanation of death
Bloopers – please be pleasant
We Get Letters – hard forgiveness
Mirabile Dictu! – is the minister a monkey?
Bottom of the Barrel – Hugh and only Hugh
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – A ten-year-old, under the tutelage of her grandmother, was becoming quite knowledgeable about the Bible. Then one day she floored her grandmother by asking, "Which Virgin was the mother of Jesus – the Virgin Mary or the King James Virgin?"
Which reminds me of the minister who wondered a bride in a white dress (originally a symbol of virginity) being married in church, might be known as “The Revised Standard Virgin?”
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Story Lectionary – There are times in every life when we need to admit we were wrong.
The Story Lectionary, dreamed and designed by the two of us, has not had the impact we had hoped. Most people like the idea. But only a few enthusiastic souls are using it. Very few.
Mainly, we underestimated the momentum of the Revised Common Lectionary and the huge corpus of supportive material that has developed around it. Clergy simply do not have the extra time it takes to develop good story sermons apart from those resources.
We also underestimated the time and energy it takes the two of us to maintain such a resource. And there are personal and family health issues. We are both getting older.
But we are still committed to story-telling as the most effective way of reaching people with God’s good news. So we will continue the story-lectionary project, but it will be based on the Revised Common Lectionary. The material will all be in Rumors. The web site will be gone as will the on-line discussion group.
In the future, each issue of Rumors will focus on the story values that are there in the RCL, with both of us contributing thoughts that we hope will be helpful to preachers. We may suggest broadening the lection to include more of the story. Occasionally when there simply is no story value in all four readings, we will suggest an alternate – perhaps a story that is not in the lectionary at all.
Many of you had your hopes raised by the Story Lectionary concept. To you we apologize. It is our hope that focusing on the story values in the RCL will make the material more practically useful to more of you.
And thanks to all for your patience and encouragement.
Jim Taylor and Ralph Milton
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary that you may hear in church this coming Sunday, August 24th, which is the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16 [21].
Exodus 1:8-2:10 – The story
Don’t get hung up on technical questions such as whether there were only three midwives in all of Egypt, and did they really report directly to Pharaoh. This is a legend, and legends seldom pay much attention to such details.
This legend has things to say to us, if we allow ourselves to get inside the story. I find some powerful ideas stirring inside me about the courageous work of women who are normally powerless.
Moses would not have survived without five strong women: the two midwives, his mother, his sister and Pharaoh’s daughter.
And we often find ourselves with a “new king who did not know Joseph.” A new boss is hired, a new political party is in power, a good friend moves or gets married. Being retired from many church involvements, I often find myself standing on the sidelines realizing that the people running things now have no idea who I am. Which is the way it needs to be, even though my mind needs to talk to my ego about this quite often.
There are a number of stories within this story that could be used. There’s the brave midwives, without whom Moses and others would not have been. There’s the fierce, inventive love of his mother and his sister Miriam.
The character in this legend that I find most interesting is Pharaoh’s daughter. To get my head around who she was, I wrote an “aggada,” which you will find below and which you are free to use in your worship.
The entire Moses saga, as indeed much of Bible, is about the powerless working with faith and courage, confronting the domination systems in their world. Psalm 124 below, either in Jim’s paraphrase or in the original, is on that theme. Indeed the gospel reading resonates with a deep, quiet humor, as it tells of an illiterate fisherman being appointed, in the view of the Roman church at least, to be the head of the church.
Ralph Milton
When I read the story of Moses floating down the river, to be adopted into a different racial and cultural family, my mind can’t help seeing parallels. My own two grandchildren are both interracial adoptions, for example. I’d want to make a connection to Ephesians 1:5, “He destined us for adoption...” and 2:19, “So you are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens, members of the household...”
The river is also a powerful symbol. I think of Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim” in which the hero begins a new life crawling out of a river onto the bank. I remember that early Christians came out of the water to begin their new lives. I wonder if we all recognize, at some cellular level, that we too came out of the water – the ocean, the womb...
Perhaps this story should be told on a riverbank, standing waist-deep in the water!
But since that’s impossible in most of our sterile sanctuaries, I would focus on the theme of new life, new beginnings, new possibilities. A baptism would be wonderful. But lacking that, I might hand out eggs. Uncooked. To pass around. A kind of egg-and-spoon relay, in church, that physically reminds people of the fragility and responsibility of new life. And I would ask whose fragile soul YOU are adopting. Who gets a better chance, because of you?
……………………………………………..Jim Taylor
Psalm 124 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 The odds were stacked against us from the beginning.
2 The great corporations strung us a good line
about caring for us, about bringing prosperity.
But they really meant prosperity for themselves.
When the profits looked better somewhere else,
they abandoned us. They always do.
3 The powerful nations promised us freedom;
they loaned us millions for a fresh start.
now we are enslaved by our debt.
They will not free us.
4 The arms makers sold us weapons
to protect ourselves against our neighbors.
They sold weapons to our neighbors,
to protect themselves against us.
5 Now our former friends are a threat.
We need more, and more, and more.
6 The only one not in this for private gain is God.
7 If we have retained any faith in human nature,
in justice, in our own identity,
8 it is because of God.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Romans 12:1-8 – I don’t always understand what Paul is writing about, but this time I think he comes through loud and clear. This is an inspired metaphor of the church as the body of Christ. And he shines that metaphor in various ways. We present our bodies “as a living sacrifice,” something that is beautiful and good and holy which we can return to God.
But the metaphor works in another direction as well. Each of us have different gifts, but every gift is needed as part of God’s work, just as all four women in that Moses story offered their gifts – without which there would have been no story. It would be good to use this passage to reflect on our own gifts and how we can use them as part of God’s universal church.
Matthew 16:13-20 – This passage is one of the foundations of the Roman Catholic Church and other apostolic churches which teach that Jesus invested the leadership of the church in Peter who became the first bishop, and that this line of succession follows down through to present-day bishops.
Other denominations see this as Jesus investing leadership of the church in Peter, yes, but others as well. Peter was a very ordinary person and often not very bright or courageous. He had his shortcomings, as did Moses, who apparently had trouble speaking in public. But God’s call to Peter and Moses is like the call to all of us ordinary people struggling to live God’s way in a complicated world.
All of us are called to ‘bind and to loose?’ Each one of us holds the keys to the kingdom.
A children’s story, “Miriam Saves Her Brother,” based on Exodus 1 & 2, can be found in the “Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 186. A story called “Simon Becomes Peter,” based on the Matthew passage, may be found on page 189.
“The Lectionary Story Bible,” in three volumes, is probably the largest collection of children’s Bible stories ever undertaken. Certainly it’s the largest collection of such stories based on the Revised Common Lectionary. Volumes “Year A” and “Year B” are published and available. “Year C” will be published next spring.
If you don’t already own these books, click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – Pharaoh's Daughter
"...I wish I could hear my father sing again."
An Aggada based on Exodus 2:1-10
ÓRalph Milton
from Is This Your Idea of a Good Time, God?
Wood Lake Books
I don't think my father wanted to be a Pharaoh. Not if he'd had a choice. He might have been a musician. Sometimes, when he would give a banquet, father would bring the best musicians in all Egypt to entertain. And I could tell that father loved the music while he disliked the stuffed shirts he invited to the banquet. I remember father singing in the hallways sometimes, years ago when I was just a child, before he was a Pharaoh. Once, he even sang to me, a strong and tender song.
I haven't heard him sing for years. They say the head that wears a crown can never sleep too well, and those who cannot sleep will never sing. Father feels such pressure. I know he does. I can see the tiny muscles just below his ears that move when he's afraid.
Those stuffed shirts who run my father's government are feeling pressure from the hordes of Hebrews. I overheard my father and some other men discuss the problem once. "Kick the whole bunch out," one man said.
"No," said another. "Who would make our bricks? Who would tend our fields? We need the Hebrews. We just don't need so many. What we need is population control."
Because my father is the Pharaoh, he hardly ever takes his meals with us. He's much too busy. Except every month or two we have a "family time" and we eat a hurried meal together. Father talks to us. We don't talk to father and he hardly looks at us.
"Do you know how strong those Hebrew women are?" he asked us once, not wanting or expecting any answer. "Why, I ordered all the midwives to destroy the male babies just as soon as they are born, but they tell me those Hebrew women just take an hour away from their work, pop out the babies, and go back to work. They just pop them out, and the midwives aren't even needed." Father laughed dryly at his own humor. "They just pop them out."
I glanced up at my mother then, and she was laughing too, but I could tell it wasn't at my father's humor. "He knows nothing," she said later. "He's never seen a baby born."
"But why would father want those babies killed? Is my own father really such a beast?"
"He is a Pharaoh first and always, and a father only sometimes."
Two weeks latter, I was bathing in the Nile, enjoying the cool, fresh water on my body, when Lita, one of my servants pointed to a basket in the reeds nearby.
"Bring it to me!"
"It's a baby!" said Lita as she pushed the basket to me. "It's a beautiful Hebrew baby. My mother is a midwife. She told me soldiers throw the Hebrew baby boys into the river now."
"So this is a child my brave father fears." I picked the baby up into my arms and held him close. "My father will not hurt you," I said.
The baby cried a little. Then it smiled and tried to suck my finger.
"You will start a rumor," I said to Lita. It was a sudden inspiration, and if I'd stopped to think I would not have said it. "You will whisper in the corridors of the palace that I have been seduced by Scrakum, yes Scrakum, the Prime Minister's son. He's such a stuffed shirt. And this is our child."
Lita grinned. "This is against the Pharaoh's law! But I will help you save the child."
"My father's law, to have these babies killed, is wrong, Lita. Women cannot fight the law, but we can resist."
It took a month to get an audience with my own father. "Five minutes. No more," said his secretary, smirking at the child in my arms.
"Yes?" said father in his official Pharaoh voice.
"This baby," I said quietly. "You have heard perhaps that it belongs to Scrakum."
"I have heard, Bithia.* I am making arrangements for you to be part of Scrakum's harem. He doesn't want you for a wife. In fact, he claims the child is not his but he is willing to acknowledge it for my sake. All the palace women say the baby looks like Scrakum."
I looked my father in the eye. "The child is Hebrew," I said firmly.
I could see the fear that ran across my father's face. He sensed immediately the derisive laughter in the corridors if it were know that his own daughter had a baby by a Hebrew slave. The tiny muscles near his ears twitched. He took a long, deep drink of wine.
I had been afraid when I came in the room. Now my fear was gone. "I will tell no one, father. I will go join Scrakum's harem, even though he is a pompous ass. But this is one Hebrew child that I will guard with my whole life, and you will not touch him with your wickedness."
"Get out of here!" He meant it to sound hard and firm, but halfway through his Pharaoh's voice croaked in fear.
And then I pitied him. I pitied him and loved him. And how I wish that I could hear my father sing again.
* In ancient Jewish Midrash, Pharoah’s daughter was named Bithia.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
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Good Stuff – This from Bob Bates of Florence, Massachusetts.
A Beautiful Explanation of Death
A sick man turned to his doctor as he was preparing to leave the examination room. "Doctor,” he said. “I am afraid to die. Tell me what lies on the other side."
"I don't know," said the doctor, very quietly.
"You don't know? You, a Christian man, do not know what is on the other side?"
The doctor was holding the handle of the door. From the other side came a sound of scratching and whining. As he opened the door, a dog sprang into the room and leaped on him with an eager show of gladness.
Turning to the patient, the doctor said, "Did you notice my dog? He's never been in this room before. He didn't know what was inside. He knew nothing except that I was here, and when the door opened, he sprang in without fear. I know little of what is on the other side of death, but I do know one thing. I know my loving God is there and that is enough."
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff –
* A hymn: There is a Bomb in Gilead
* There was an organist, who (according to the bulletin) began the service in an "Introit" and concluded with a "Detroit."
* There will be a meeting of the men’s group next Tuesday. We hope the men will try to be pleasant.
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – What a [person] needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.
Charles Dudley Warner
In some churches there is more commotion and emotion than devotion.
source unknown
God can do wonders with a broken heart, if you give God all the pieces.
source unknown
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We Get Letters – This from Peggy Neufeldt in Ponoka, Alberta. It would make a great sermon illustration about how it is really hard to forgive people sometimes.
Bill, Jim and Scott were at a convention together and were sharing a large suite on the top of a 75-story skyscraper.
After a long day of meetings, they were shocked to hear that the elevators in their hotel were broken and they would have to climb 75 flights of stairs to get to their room.
Bill said to Jim and Scott, "Let's break the monotony of this unpleasant task by concentrating on something interesting. I'll tell jokes for 25 flights, Jim can sing songs for the next 25 flights and Scott can tell sad stories for the rest of the way."
At the 26th floor, Bill stopped telling jokes and Jim began to sing. At the 51st floor Jim stopped singing and Scott began to tell sad stories.
"I will tell my saddest story first," he said. "I left the room key in the car!"
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Is the minister a monkey?!”
This is from years ago, probably 15 or 20, and it has been on Rumors at least once before. But it is too good not to share again.
Because it really happened. This letter was sent on the letterhead of the Anglican Church of Canada to the director of the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center. Dear Dr. Hearn:Thank you for your letter of December 4 addressed to Dr. George Cram of the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund in which you seek information for your International Directory of Primatology.
I should perhaps inform you that the term 'primate' in our context refers to the senior archbishop and chief pastor of the Anglican Church of Canada. The Relief and Development Fund over which he presides is an agency for the alleviation of global poverty and hunger on behalf of Anglican Christians in this country.
I think the primates in your study are perhaps of a different species. While it is true that our primate occasionally enjoys bananas, I have never seen him walk with his knuckles on the ground or scratch himself publicly under the armpits. He does have three children, but this is a far cry from 'breeding colonies of primates” as your research project mentions.
Like you we do not import our primates from the wild, however. They are elected from among the bishops of our church. This is occasionally a cause of similar, though arcane, comment. The subject of primate biology might be of great importance in your field but, alas, not so in ours. There are a mere 28 Anglican primates in the whole world. They are all males, of course, but so far we have had no problems with reproduction. They include such distinguished persons as the Most Reverend and Right Honourable George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Capetown, South Africa. Have you sent letters to them? Most importantly, have they responded? They can, I believe, all read and write by themselves so perhaps this might distort your data.
Thank you for writing. I wonder if your extremely efficient database might need just a little refining? Kindest Regards, The Reverend Michael Ingham Principal Secretary to the Primate
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Bottom of the Barrel – Did you hear about the Buddhist monk who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.
Did you hear about the friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise the funds?
Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. He asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of business. They ignored her too.
So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop.
Terrified, they did so – thereby proving . . . (Are you ready for this???? Wait for it!!!) . . .that Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Preaching Materials for August 17, 2008
R U M O R S # 514
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-08-10
August 10th, 2008
EDUCATING JESUS
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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IMPORTANT: I really appreciate your notes, and Rumors is the richer for them. To protect me from viruses, please be sure that you put something on the "subject" line that lets me know that you are legit. For instance, the word "Rumors" works. And please give us your name and where you’re from. I can’t use anonymous stuff. And anyway, folks like to know. Thanks.
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Revised Common Lectionary – educating Jesus
Rumors – tears of reconciliation
Soft Edges – from public to private
Good Stuff – a letter from God
Bloopers – bring ‘em back alive
Mirabile Dictu! – the cars we drive
Bottom of the Barrel – fish and chips
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – This from Arthur Jones:
Attending a wedding for the first time, a little girl whispered to her mother, “Why is the bride dressed in white?”
“Because white is the color of happiness,” said the mom. “And today is the happiest day of her life.'
The child thought about this for a moment then. “So why is the groom wearing black?”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, August 17th, which is the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15 [20]
Story Lectionary: The story-lectionary concept is under review. Stay tuned.
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Revised Common Lectionary
Genesis 45:1-15 – This is what frustrates me about the lectionary. We jump from chapter 37 to 45 – from the brothers selling Joseph into slavery to the reconciliation. The assumption being, I suppose, that folks know the rest of the story. Most of them don’t.
And it’s a powerful legend full of the stuff of humans in a family and how they relate to each other.
This part of the story begins with the dam bursting. Joseph just can’t hold it in any longer and realizes that his rise to power and glory means little. He was a boy who had lost his home and his family and had clawed his way up to power and prestige, and when he had it, there was still this gaping hole in the centre of his life. Love is the fundamental human need, and though we often try to use power and wealth as substitutes, in the long run it never works.
The scene of a weeping Joseph and his speechless brothers begs the question. Why did this happen? How could anyone have been so awful as to do such things? And Joseph chooses to evade the question by saying that God orchestrated the whole sordid affair. Which is nonsense of course, because a God of love doesn’t treat humans that way, but perhaps the fiction is necessary because for now at least, the reality is too hard to bear.
The phrase that moves me is the one at the very end of the reading. “And after that his brothers talked with him.” Well, I guess. For the web of love to be rewoven, those brothers would need to talk and talk for hours and days and months – small talk, big talk, about everything and nothing, and sometimes with tears and recriminations.
Genuine healing takes time – lots of time and commitment.
Psalm 133 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
We don't pour oil over people's head's anymore. But the image of a gathered people, of good things overflowing, still has meaning.
1 How good it feels to have the human family
gathered together for this sumptuous feast.
2 Here we rejoice in the rich repast
of fruit and tree and vine.
Apples and oranges, grapes and cherries,
yield their joyous juices to our lusting mouths.
Drops of surplus pleasure trickle down our chins.
We dab them unself-consciously with rumpled napkins.
3 This gathering refreshes like sweet morning in the mountains,
like a prairie sky polished bright by gentle breezes.
Surely this is what the Lord intended
when God created life.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 – Paul is trying to come to grips with the reality that his own people have not accepted Jesus as the Christ.
All have been disobedient with God – Jews and Gentiles alike, though he says in verse 32 that “God imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all,” which I don’t believe. God doesn’t set us up this way. But God works through the disobedience and shows us mercy and love. In spite of everything.
Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28 – I like to call this story “Educating Jesus.” Jesus is having a bad case of burnout. He is bushed. He is deeply, viscerally tired and he needs some downtime.
So he goes for a long hike with a few of his disciples, into a nearby country where he hopes to get some rest.
If my memory serves (which it mostly doesn’t) there is some interesting word play in this story. When Jesus responds to the woman (v.26) he softens the insult by using a word that might be translated as “puppy.”
But the woman takes the insult and pushes it. The word she uses for dogs (v.27) might be translated as “mutts off the street.” She knows exactly what Jesus said and isn’t about to let him off the hook.
What that woman in the story is saying to Jesus is, “Think outside the box. Think some new thoughts, Jesus! Let yourself move outside of your comfort zone and into a reality that seems strange and fearful. And hazy. God is not just the God of Israel. God is God of all creation. That mother gave Jesus a quick and bracing slap in the face to wake him up to a larger reality.
A children’s version of the story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers may be found in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 182. The story of Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman is on page 184.
Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – May favorite way of getting in touch with a story is based on the ancient tradition of the Aggada – telling another story to understand the story. This is my Aggada on the story of Joseph and his reconciliation, which was published in Aha!!! Magazine some years ago.
Tears of Reconciliation
The sobs heaved out of his body. One after another, his large, muscular frame was wracked with grief and pain he'd never known himself to feel. Until this moment.
Joseph had never known how to cry. His life had been a struggle to survive, to prevail, to prosper, to overcome. Joseph survived on his wits. He was the only Hebrew in the Egyptian court, and his very life depended on his ability to be one jump ahead of everyone else. There was no time, no room for weakness, ever. Certainly no time for tears.
But now he was weak. Curled up like a small boy on the edge of his ornate official chair, Joseph wept the tears he should have wept through all his troubled life.
Joseph wept the tears of anger. Anger at his abusive brothers, who years before had beaten him and stripped him of his long-sleeved cloak, thrown him in a pit and sold him into slavery. Anger at the Egyptians for whom he had slaved, whom he had outwitted, and over whom he now ruled. Anger at himself, for the spoiled-brat younger brother he had been, for the lies and the cheating and the manipulation he had used to get his way.
And Joseph wept the tears of loneliness and fear. Torn from his family, thrown into slavery, no love, no affection, no affirmation, nothing but his own wits and studied determination to carry him into each terrifying day.
And now his brothers stood before him. His brothers. These were his own flesh and blood. But they were also the ones who had abused and betrayed him. He should hate and punish them for what they had done, but he couldn't. Because in spite of himself, Joseph wanted nothing in the world more than to be loved once more by his brothers. And his father. Oh, how he yearned for the affection of his father.
His brothers stood before him. Confused. Afraid. They had no idea this Egyptian official was the brother they had betrayed.
"Get out of here," Joseph shouted through his tears to all the Egyptians in the room. "Get out. I want to be alone with these men."
Then he turned on his brothers. "I am Joseph. I am your brother. Do you remember me? Is father still alive?"
The men dropped to the ground, terrified. Only Judah managed to raise his head enough to nod a yes to Joseph's plea about his father.
Again the tears. Joseph knew how much he wanted to be loved, to be accepted by these men, his brothers, and yet his anger at them boiled inside.
"It's all right, my brothers." In his need, Joseph covered up his anger. "God arranged it all. God knew there'd be a famine in the land, and God put me here in the Egyptian court so I could take care of you and my father and our whole tribe. So it wasn't your fault, you see!" Out of his desperate need, Joseph denied his anger and told the pious lie.
Joseph walked up to Benjamin, his youngest brother and embraced him. "Ben, Ben. It is so good to see you. How is Dad? Tell me how my father is?"
Benjamin swallowed hard. "He's fine. Just fine."
"Tell Dad that I'm alive. I'm O.K. And tell him that I've done OK. Tell him I'm in charge of just about everything here, that I'm second-in-command to Pharaoh. Tell him that, will you Ben?"
Ben nodded, still dazed. Joseph wondered why he'd said that. Why was it so important to have his Dad know of his success?
It took days before Joseph and his brothers cut through years of fear and anger and repression to really talk with each other. And one day, Joseph found again the anger he had hidden, enough that he could shout his rage. "Why would you do such a terrible thing?" For which there was, of course, no longer any answer.
Then one day there was confession. One by one the brothers, Joseph too, found words to name their sins. One by one they asked forgiveness from each other and from God. One by one they vowed to purge their lives of jealousy and greed that brought them to such deeds.
Now the tears flowed freely. And sometimes laughter too, as brothers saw each other now as fragile, lonely men who needed more than anything the care and love that only they could give each other.
"The God of our ancestors did not lead us to abuse and to betray you, Joseph," Judah said one day. "Our God is a just and loving God, and would never will such things. But God has used our weakness and our sin and through it has brought life to the land of Egypt and to our father's clan. Thanks be to God."
"Thanks be to God," repeated Joseph and his brothers.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
From Public to Private
For years, as I take our dogs for walks in the woods on the hills that flank the Okanagan Valley, I have repeated to myself a mantra: “Enjoy this scene! It could be the last time you will ever see it!”
Until recently, it’s been an abstract principle. On a recent walk, it became all too concrete.
I had to drive to this location, so I don’t go there as often as to some closer areas. Last fall, I saw some survey stakes driven into the ground. By spring, my peaceful dirt track threaded through pine trees arching overhead had been turned by demented bulldozers into maelstrom of mud.
When I went back last week, I found myself walking along a 66-foot wide roadbed of crudely crushed rock. It hurt the dog’s feet. It even hurt my feet, right through thick soles.
In a month or so, I’d guess, the roadbed will be paved, with curbs and gutters and storm grates.
The trees, the shade, the little animals that scurry through fallen pine needles and dry grass, the birds that flit through the bushes picking berries – all gone.
This is development?
I’ve never quite understood how the simple act of planting a few survey stakes in the ground precipitates an inevitable and apparently unstoppable procession – chainsaws, bulldozers, excavators, rock crushers, compactors, cement trucks, paving machines, construction crews...
And then, when it’s all done and fresh blacktop glares angrily back at the sun, people will buy lots beside the road, drive in more survey stakes, and start the whole juggernaut all over again.
There’s already a billboard up at the entrance to the new development. It promises luxury living, scenic views, close to nature...
By the time the builders are finished, nature will have been pretty well exterminated. Any nature remaining will have to depend on whatever the owners of those luxury homes choose to plant in an expensive effort to restore some of what used to be there free.
Oh, the new properties will look pretty, in a Better Homes and Gardens kind of way. But the “nature” will all be artificial.
Perhaps I’m growing more cynical, but the term “development” seems to me to be a euphemism for taking what had been free and turning it into an investment. Someone will throw piles of money at it in the expectation that others will throw even bigger piles back.
Development means transferring unrestricted access into “No Trespassing” signs. Development means imposing our will on the earth, raping it, beating it into submission, instead of collaborating with the existing conditions.
That’s what we do with housing subdivisions. But it’s an equally valid description of how the privatizing policies of The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank attempt to drag “underdeveloped nations” into the “developed” world.
I can no longer think of this as development.
Two centuries ago, a Quaker poet coined the phrase, “I shall not pass this way again.”
Indeed, I shall not. Why would I want to?
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Good Stuff – This from John Severson.
A Letter from God
My dear child:
This is God. Today I will be handling all of your problems for you. I do not need your help. So, have a nice day.
I love you.
God
P.S. And, remember – if life happens to deliver a situation to you that you cannot handle, do not attempt to resolve it yourself! Kindly put it in the SFGTD (something for God to do) box. I will get to it in MY TIME. All situations will be resolved, but in my time, not yours. Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold onto it by worrying about it. Instead, focus on all the wonderful things that are present in your life now.
Now, you have a nice day.
Love,
God
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Jim Spinks sends the story of a funeral director who had his hands full running a funeral parlor and raising two rowdy preteen boys.
Preparing for a funeral one day, he found the hearse plastered with police department stickers, courtesy of his sons. He frantically scraped the stickers off before his clients could read what they said. "Bring ‘em Back Alive!"
From the file:
* The offertory prayer concluded with the words, "In Jesus' name we pay."
* The organist will present a concert of scared music.
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.
source unknown via Evelyn McLachlan
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
source unknown
Christian faith essentially consists in an ability to see what God chooses to show and which cannot be seen without faith.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “The cars we drive!”)
With the high price of petrol – with GM no longer producing the Hummer – and other apocalyptic annoyances, this seemed like an appropriate summer hymn to sing.
The tune is “They will know we are Christians ...”
There’s a fish on my Hummer, there’s a fish on my Ford,
There’s a fish on my Hummer, there’s a fish on my Ford,
With my fish I can tell the world I’m driving for the Lord,
And they’ll see how God has blessed me by the car I can afford.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by the fish on our cars,
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our cars.
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Bottom of the Barrel – Lost on a rainy night, a nun stumbles across a monastery and requests shelter there. Fortunately, she’s just in time for dinner and is treated to the best fish and chips she’s ever had.
After dinner, she goes into the kitchen to thank the chefs. She is met by two brothers. “Hello, I’m Brother Michael, and this is Brother Charles.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” said the nun. “I just wanted to thank you for a wonderful dinner. The fish and chips were the best I’ve ever tasted. Out of curiosity, who cooked what?”
“I’m the fish friar,” said one.
“And I’m the chip monk,” said the other.
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-08-10
August 10th, 2008
EDUCATING JESUS
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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IMPORTANT: I really appreciate your notes, and Rumors is the richer for them. To protect me from viruses, please be sure that you put something on the "subject" line that lets me know that you are legit. For instance, the word "Rumors" works. And please give us your name and where you’re from. I can’t use anonymous stuff. And anyway, folks like to know. Thanks.
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Revised Common Lectionary – educating Jesus
Rumors – tears of reconciliation
Soft Edges – from public to private
Good Stuff – a letter from God
Bloopers – bring ‘em back alive
Mirabile Dictu! – the cars we drive
Bottom of the Barrel – fish and chips
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – This from Arthur Jones:
Attending a wedding for the first time, a little girl whispered to her mother, “Why is the bride dressed in white?”
“Because white is the color of happiness,” said the mom. “And today is the happiest day of her life.'
The child thought about this for a moment then. “So why is the groom wearing black?”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, August 17th, which is the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15 [20]
Story Lectionary: The story-lectionary concept is under review. Stay tuned.
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Revised Common Lectionary
Genesis 45:1-15 – This is what frustrates me about the lectionary. We jump from chapter 37 to 45 – from the brothers selling Joseph into slavery to the reconciliation. The assumption being, I suppose, that folks know the rest of the story. Most of them don’t.
And it’s a powerful legend full of the stuff of humans in a family and how they relate to each other.
This part of the story begins with the dam bursting. Joseph just can’t hold it in any longer and realizes that his rise to power and glory means little. He was a boy who had lost his home and his family and had clawed his way up to power and prestige, and when he had it, there was still this gaping hole in the centre of his life. Love is the fundamental human need, and though we often try to use power and wealth as substitutes, in the long run it never works.
The scene of a weeping Joseph and his speechless brothers begs the question. Why did this happen? How could anyone have been so awful as to do such things? And Joseph chooses to evade the question by saying that God orchestrated the whole sordid affair. Which is nonsense of course, because a God of love doesn’t treat humans that way, but perhaps the fiction is necessary because for now at least, the reality is too hard to bear.
The phrase that moves me is the one at the very end of the reading. “And after that his brothers talked with him.” Well, I guess. For the web of love to be rewoven, those brothers would need to talk and talk for hours and days and months – small talk, big talk, about everything and nothing, and sometimes with tears and recriminations.
Genuine healing takes time – lots of time and commitment.
Psalm 133 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
We don't pour oil over people's head's anymore. But the image of a gathered people, of good things overflowing, still has meaning.
1 How good it feels to have the human family
gathered together for this sumptuous feast.
2 Here we rejoice in the rich repast
of fruit and tree and vine.
Apples and oranges, grapes and cherries,
yield their joyous juices to our lusting mouths.
Drops of surplus pleasure trickle down our chins.
We dab them unself-consciously with rumpled napkins.
3 This gathering refreshes like sweet morning in the mountains,
like a prairie sky polished bright by gentle breezes.
Surely this is what the Lord intended
when God created life.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 – Paul is trying to come to grips with the reality that his own people have not accepted Jesus as the Christ.
All have been disobedient with God – Jews and Gentiles alike, though he says in verse 32 that “God imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all,” which I don’t believe. God doesn’t set us up this way. But God works through the disobedience and shows us mercy and love. In spite of everything.
Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28 – I like to call this story “Educating Jesus.” Jesus is having a bad case of burnout. He is bushed. He is deeply, viscerally tired and he needs some downtime.
So he goes for a long hike with a few of his disciples, into a nearby country where he hopes to get some rest.
If my memory serves (which it mostly doesn’t) there is some interesting word play in this story. When Jesus responds to the woman (v.26) he softens the insult by using a word that might be translated as “puppy.”
But the woman takes the insult and pushes it. The word she uses for dogs (v.27) might be translated as “mutts off the street.” She knows exactly what Jesus said and isn’t about to let him off the hook.
What that woman in the story is saying to Jesus is, “Think outside the box. Think some new thoughts, Jesus! Let yourself move outside of your comfort zone and into a reality that seems strange and fearful. And hazy. God is not just the God of Israel. God is God of all creation. That mother gave Jesus a quick and bracing slap in the face to wake him up to a larger reality.
A children’s version of the story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers may be found in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 182. The story of Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman is on page 184.
Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – May favorite way of getting in touch with a story is based on the ancient tradition of the Aggada – telling another story to understand the story. This is my Aggada on the story of Joseph and his reconciliation, which was published in Aha!!! Magazine some years ago.
Tears of Reconciliation
The sobs heaved out of his body. One after another, his large, muscular frame was wracked with grief and pain he'd never known himself to feel. Until this moment.
Joseph had never known how to cry. His life had been a struggle to survive, to prevail, to prosper, to overcome. Joseph survived on his wits. He was the only Hebrew in the Egyptian court, and his very life depended on his ability to be one jump ahead of everyone else. There was no time, no room for weakness, ever. Certainly no time for tears.
But now he was weak. Curled up like a small boy on the edge of his ornate official chair, Joseph wept the tears he should have wept through all his troubled life.
Joseph wept the tears of anger. Anger at his abusive brothers, who years before had beaten him and stripped him of his long-sleeved cloak, thrown him in a pit and sold him into slavery. Anger at the Egyptians for whom he had slaved, whom he had outwitted, and over whom he now ruled. Anger at himself, for the spoiled-brat younger brother he had been, for the lies and the cheating and the manipulation he had used to get his way.
And Joseph wept the tears of loneliness and fear. Torn from his family, thrown into slavery, no love, no affection, no affirmation, nothing but his own wits and studied determination to carry him into each terrifying day.
And now his brothers stood before him. His brothers. These were his own flesh and blood. But they were also the ones who had abused and betrayed him. He should hate and punish them for what they had done, but he couldn't. Because in spite of himself, Joseph wanted nothing in the world more than to be loved once more by his brothers. And his father. Oh, how he yearned for the affection of his father.
His brothers stood before him. Confused. Afraid. They had no idea this Egyptian official was the brother they had betrayed.
"Get out of here," Joseph shouted through his tears to all the Egyptians in the room. "Get out. I want to be alone with these men."
Then he turned on his brothers. "I am Joseph. I am your brother. Do you remember me? Is father still alive?"
The men dropped to the ground, terrified. Only Judah managed to raise his head enough to nod a yes to Joseph's plea about his father.
Again the tears. Joseph knew how much he wanted to be loved, to be accepted by these men, his brothers, and yet his anger at them boiled inside.
"It's all right, my brothers." In his need, Joseph covered up his anger. "God arranged it all. God knew there'd be a famine in the land, and God put me here in the Egyptian court so I could take care of you and my father and our whole tribe. So it wasn't your fault, you see!" Out of his desperate need, Joseph denied his anger and told the pious lie.
Joseph walked up to Benjamin, his youngest brother and embraced him. "Ben, Ben. It is so good to see you. How is Dad? Tell me how my father is?"
Benjamin swallowed hard. "He's fine. Just fine."
"Tell Dad that I'm alive. I'm O.K. And tell him that I've done OK. Tell him I'm in charge of just about everything here, that I'm second-in-command to Pharaoh. Tell him that, will you Ben?"
Ben nodded, still dazed. Joseph wondered why he'd said that. Why was it so important to have his Dad know of his success?
It took days before Joseph and his brothers cut through years of fear and anger and repression to really talk with each other. And one day, Joseph found again the anger he had hidden, enough that he could shout his rage. "Why would you do such a terrible thing?" For which there was, of course, no longer any answer.
Then one day there was confession. One by one the brothers, Joseph too, found words to name their sins. One by one they asked forgiveness from each other and from God. One by one they vowed to purge their lives of jealousy and greed that brought them to such deeds.
Now the tears flowed freely. And sometimes laughter too, as brothers saw each other now as fragile, lonely men who needed more than anything the care and love that only they could give each other.
"The God of our ancestors did not lead us to abuse and to betray you, Joseph," Judah said one day. "Our God is a just and loving God, and would never will such things. But God has used our weakness and our sin and through it has brought life to the land of Egypt and to our father's clan. Thanks be to God."
"Thanks be to God," repeated Joseph and his brothers.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
From Public to Private
For years, as I take our dogs for walks in the woods on the hills that flank the Okanagan Valley, I have repeated to myself a mantra: “Enjoy this scene! It could be the last time you will ever see it!”
Until recently, it’s been an abstract principle. On a recent walk, it became all too concrete.
I had to drive to this location, so I don’t go there as often as to some closer areas. Last fall, I saw some survey stakes driven into the ground. By spring, my peaceful dirt track threaded through pine trees arching overhead had been turned by demented bulldozers into maelstrom of mud.
When I went back last week, I found myself walking along a 66-foot wide roadbed of crudely crushed rock. It hurt the dog’s feet. It even hurt my feet, right through thick soles.
In a month or so, I’d guess, the roadbed will be paved, with curbs and gutters and storm grates.
The trees, the shade, the little animals that scurry through fallen pine needles and dry grass, the birds that flit through the bushes picking berries – all gone.
This is development?
I’ve never quite understood how the simple act of planting a few survey stakes in the ground precipitates an inevitable and apparently unstoppable procession – chainsaws, bulldozers, excavators, rock crushers, compactors, cement trucks, paving machines, construction crews...
And then, when it’s all done and fresh blacktop glares angrily back at the sun, people will buy lots beside the road, drive in more survey stakes, and start the whole juggernaut all over again.
There’s already a billboard up at the entrance to the new development. It promises luxury living, scenic views, close to nature...
By the time the builders are finished, nature will have been pretty well exterminated. Any nature remaining will have to depend on whatever the owners of those luxury homes choose to plant in an expensive effort to restore some of what used to be there free.
Oh, the new properties will look pretty, in a Better Homes and Gardens kind of way. But the “nature” will all be artificial.
Perhaps I’m growing more cynical, but the term “development” seems to me to be a euphemism for taking what had been free and turning it into an investment. Someone will throw piles of money at it in the expectation that others will throw even bigger piles back.
Development means transferring unrestricted access into “No Trespassing” signs. Development means imposing our will on the earth, raping it, beating it into submission, instead of collaborating with the existing conditions.
That’s what we do with housing subdivisions. But it’s an equally valid description of how the privatizing policies of The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank attempt to drag “underdeveloped nations” into the “developed” world.
I can no longer think of this as development.
Two centuries ago, a Quaker poet coined the phrase, “I shall not pass this way again.”
Indeed, I shall not. Why would I want to?
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Good Stuff – This from John Severson.
A Letter from God
My dear child:
This is God. Today I will be handling all of your problems for you. I do not need your help. So, have a nice day.
I love you.
God
P.S. And, remember – if life happens to deliver a situation to you that you cannot handle, do not attempt to resolve it yourself! Kindly put it in the SFGTD (something for God to do) box. I will get to it in MY TIME. All situations will be resolved, but in my time, not yours. Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold onto it by worrying about it. Instead, focus on all the wonderful things that are present in your life now.
Now, you have a nice day.
Love,
God
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Jim Spinks sends the story of a funeral director who had his hands full running a funeral parlor and raising two rowdy preteen boys.
Preparing for a funeral one day, he found the hearse plastered with police department stickers, courtesy of his sons. He frantically scraped the stickers off before his clients could read what they said. "Bring ‘em Back Alive!"
From the file:
* The offertory prayer concluded with the words, "In Jesus' name we pay."
* The organist will present a concert of scared music.
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.
source unknown via Evelyn McLachlan
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
source unknown
Christian faith essentially consists in an ability to see what God chooses to show and which cannot be seen without faith.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “The cars we drive!”)
With the high price of petrol – with GM no longer producing the Hummer – and other apocalyptic annoyances, this seemed like an appropriate summer hymn to sing.
The tune is “They will know we are Christians ...”
There’s a fish on my Hummer, there’s a fish on my Ford,
There’s a fish on my Hummer, there’s a fish on my Ford,
With my fish I can tell the world I’m driving for the Lord,
And they’ll see how God has blessed me by the car I can afford.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by the fish on our cars,
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our cars.
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Bottom of the Barrel – Lost on a rainy night, a nun stumbles across a monastery and requests shelter there. Fortunately, she’s just in time for dinner and is treated to the best fish and chips she’s ever had.
After dinner, she goes into the kitchen to thank the chefs. She is met by two brothers. “Hello, I’m Brother Michael, and this is Brother Charles.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” said the nun. “I just wanted to thank you for a wonderful dinner. The fish and chips were the best I’ve ever tasted. Out of curiosity, who cooked what?”
“I’m the fish friar,” said one.
“And I’m the chip monk,” said the other.
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
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* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
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