R U M O R S # 574
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2009-11-01
November 1, 2009
A DEEPLY TOUCHING STORY
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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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If you need Rumors a day or two early from time to time, please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list. http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
I post each issue of Rumors on that blog, usually during the last half of the week previous. Or if an issue of Rumors goes missing, or you need a back issue, you can go and find it there.
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The Story – two courageous women
Rumors – Boaz remembers
Soft Edges – people and pests
Bloopers – on a private cuddle sac
We Get Letters – church of steel
Mirabile Dictu! – character lines
Bottom of the Barrel – Jesus is watching
Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
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 Bob Buchanan.
A Sunday School teacher was trying to explain about saying grace before meals. One of the pupils was the young son of the minister of that church, so she started the discussion by asking him, "Jerry, what does your father say when the family sits down to dinner?"
"Dad says, 'Go easy on the butter, kids, its three dollars a pound!'"
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These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, November 8, 2009 which is Proper 26 [31] which is also All Saints Day.
* Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17 or1 Kings 17:8-16
* Psalm 127 or Psalm 146
* Hebrews 9:24-28
* Mark 12:38-44
The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Ralph says –
The story of Ruth and Naomi is one of the most moving and powerful sagas in the Bible, because it tells the story of the courage of two women who are caught in a male-oriented system. In this part of the story, Naomi instructs Ruth to deliberately seduce Boaz (“feet” is a euphemism for genitals) because otherwise they will face starvation. Only two snippets of this story are included in the lectionary. It deserves more attention and it is my choice for the story this week even though there is an equally powerful story of the “widow’s mite” in the gospel. If I were preaching, I’d find a way to connect the two, perhaps to talk about the way your perception of morality changes when your back is up against the wall.
If I were going to preach the story of Ruth and Naomi, I would use the children’s version from the Lectionary Story Bible, Year B, page 220, because it tells the whole Ruth and Naomi story. The story is also summarized in the Reader’s Theatre version of scripture, and you could excerpt just that even if you don’t plan to use the whole Reader’s Theatre thing.
Either way, please tell the story. This week’s lectionary selection doesn’t really make much sense without that context.
There is also a monologue, “Boaz Remembers” under “Rumors.” It is not intended for, nor would it be understood by, children. Its best use would be in a study group looking at the story, but it does give some insight into the reality of a widow’s life in biblical days.
Jim says –
To me, the story of Naomi and Ruth is one of the most touching in the Bible. It’s right up there with the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
But I think that most presentations of the story
a) deal with only small fragments of it
b) make Naomi far too nice.
When I read the whole story, beginning to end, I see Naomi as rather embittered by her losses – understandably, since she lost not just her husband, but both sons too. With no male head-of-household, she was a total nobody.
So she decided to return home, where she could at least throw herself under the umbrella of some more distant male relatives. Yes, she tries to persuade her daughters-in-law to stay in their home country, but I wonder if that’s genuine self-sacrifice, or an episode of the “oh, poor me!” blues.
But she must have been a lovable woman once, for Ruth to stick with her.
Then, when they got back to Naomi’s home, Naomi manipulates Ruth to seduce Boaz, an unmarried kin. The climax of the story (Chapter 4:16-17) is that Naomi now has a grandson. She got what she had wanted all along. Her lineage would continue.
Of course, we can see further into the future – that lineage will eventually come to flower in King David.
Psalm 127:1-5 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
In the wisdom of the psalmist's time, children offered the only social security most families had; barrenness was considered a curse. Today, many people choose not to have children, and governments provide the social security.
1 The road of life takes many tricky turns;
you never know what crisis waits around the corner.
2 Each day has only 24 hours;
You cannot accomplish any more by burning candles at both ends;
You will only burn yourself out.
But God knows what you can do, and God will give you the strength you need.
3 God gives family and friends to sustain us when we weaken;
4 They are our insurance against the future.
5 Treat everyone as a friend,
and you will never lack for support when you need it.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Publications.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Hebrews 9:24-28 – The passage seems to be around knowing the difference between a sacrifice that is real, and those which are unreal. And it has to do with cost. The ritual sacrifices of the priests cost them nothing, whereas Jesus’ sacrifice cost him everything.
Mark 12:38-44 – Two real incidents come immediately to mind. The two women involved are both dead. In one tiny, struggling congregation where Bev served during her first years in ministry, a woman in the community would make a grand entrance to the church twice a year, and each time would put a cheque for several thousand dollars on the offering plate, even though Bev said to her on one occasion, “We don’t want your money. We want you.”
In another congregation, a woman attended church faithfully and involved herself in the work of the church as much as she was able. Rachel suffered significant handicaps herself and was a single mother with two handicapped children. She lived on welfare which was inadequate for her most basic needs and even less so considering her handicapped children.
And Rachel tithed. Only Bev, who helped her set up a budget, knew that. From the little she had, Rachel tithed, even though Bev suggested she might give less. “If I don’t do that part right,” she said, “nothing else works.” Rachel tithed faithfully, year after year until she died.
So this incident in Mark’s gospel is realty for me. It’s about real people I have known.
There’s a children’s version of the whole story of Ruth and Naomi in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year B,” page 220 and the “Poor Woman’s Gift” on page 225.
If you don’t own a set of “The Lectionary Story Bible,” 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
Or, if you live in Canada or the US, simply pick up the phone and dial 1 800 663 2775.
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Rumors – An Aggada based on the book of Ruth
Boaz remembers. . .
The story of Ruth who had no other options
by Ralph Milton
I am a decent man. I have a reputation to maintain. I live a decent life and say my prayers daily. I thank God for many things, and most especially I say the prayer prescribed for all Jewish men, “Thank God that I was not born a woman.”
Mostly I steer clear of women. They spell nothing but trouble, and in a small town like Bethlehem, there are no secrets.
So when I woke in the middle of the night, naked, my cloak pulled up to my chest, a shudder of fear ran through me. And then, in the darkness, I became aware of a woman beside me. I could hear her breathing. I could feel the warmth of her body. I knew I was in trouble. Deep trouble. My head was pounding and I felt sick to the stomach, from fear and too much to drink. What kind of mess have I gotten myself into?
It was the last night of the threshing season. Big celebration. Lots of good food and lots and lots of wine, and everyone ate and drank and partied till the wee small hours, until they passed out somewhere on the threshing floor. And yes, a lot of men and women got mixed up with each other – they do every year – but I always thought of myself as too smart to fall into that trap.
Now this. And I didn’t even know who this woman was. It was the middle of the night. She put her face close to mine and whispered, “I am Ruth.”
“Ruth? Ruth who? I don’t know any Ruth.”
“I am Ruth, the woman from Moab. I am the daughter-in-law of Naomi, your kinswoman. You were very kind to me and helped me glean grain from your fields. You protected me and gave me food.”
Then the whole thing came clear to me. I do her a favor. She pays me back by giving me her body.
“Damn,” I whispered loudly. Then more quietly because I didn’t want to wake up any of the other drunken bodies scattered around the threshing floor – “I thought you were something more than a prostitute. Do you think I let you glean in the fields just so I could get you into the sack?”
I could feel her stiffen and sit up. “I should have known. I should have bloody well known that no man would understand this.”
“Quiet,” I whispered. “You’ll wake everybody up.”
“Let them wake up,” Ruth hissed. “And I’ll give them a little lecture about what it’s like being a woman. A woman is just half a human, remember. I have no rights. I have no place I can go back to, and no place I can go forward to. I am a foreigner in this country, I am a widow, I have no father and no sons. All I have is a mother-in-law who schemes and plans and figures that if I come here and seduce you, maybe you’ll marry me. But you wouldn’t know what it’s like to have your back against the wall, to have no options, no choices and no hope. It’s no wonder you men pray, ‘Thank God I was not born a woman.’ I would too. Men have all the power and all the choices and I have no power and no choices except the power of sex and so I turn myself into a prostitute in the wild hope that you might marry me.”
I couldn’t see her in the dark but I could feel her anger and her pain. And I could remember her face. I had seen the grim determination in her eyes and in her body as she worked in the blazing sun from early morning till late at night, breaking her back to pick up the few little heads of grain missed by the harvesters. And I had heard her story gossiped in the streets of Bethlehem, how hope had turned to pain and death in her native Moab, of her dedication to her mother-in-law. I had envied her courage, her strength, her commitment. Now I could hear her deep and angry breathing as she sat there beside me on the threshing floor.
She was right, of course. Part of my daily prayer was to say, “Thank God I was not born a woman,” and now, suddenly, I knew why. I was far too weak to be a woman. I would long ago have been crushed by the pain and circumstance Ruth and Naomi had faced. “Thank God I was not born a woman,” because I could never do what Ruth had done, simply to stay alive. Nor did I have the loyalty and commitment she had showed, when she followed Naomi into a strange and distant land.
And then I knew I needed Ruth. Not for the sex and not for the comfort but for the sheer strength and will and hope that lives in such a person.
“Ruth,” I said. “If I can work it out, will you marry me?”
“No,” she said. “If it means death, so be it, but I won’t sell myself again, just to survive.”
“Not for your sake, Ruth. For mine. I have power, but you have strength. As a male, I have rights, but you have purpose. Without you, I am incomplete.”
There was a long, long silence. Then in the darkness of that threshing floor, she took my hand.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
People and Pests
Our cat Joey caught a mouse the other day. Joey generally prefers occupying my lounge chair in front of the fireplace to catching mice. In fact, in the two years we’ve had him, this is the first time I’ve seen him catch anything other than his tail in the door.
Joan looked out, and saw Joey playing with something. He grabbed it in his mouth, flung it in the air, pounced on it, then flung it in the air and pounced again...
I went out to check. Joey had a mouse. A small, wet, beslobbered, utterly terrified little mouse. The words of Scottish poet Robbie Burns fitted well:
“Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie, Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie!”
I intervened. I grabbed Joey and held him back.
The mouse, suddenly released from torment, looked around desperately with its beady black eyes. Then it scuttled for the closest shelter, which happened to be – I still find this hard to believe – between Joey’s legs. Under Joey’s belly.
It makes me wonder why biologists would choose mice for testing intelligence.
It also makes me wonder why I should bother protecting a mouse. Mice are, after all, pests. We hire exterminators to get rid of them. Ruthless reason suggests that I would have been smarter to kill the “wee beastie” than save it.
Is it just that they look so cute?
Deer also look adorably cute, with those big soft Bambi eyes. But they too are pests. Joan looked out the other morning and announced, “Look! The deer have stripped the bark off the weeping spruce again!”
She had been out the day before, weeding the flower bed around that tree. The bark was still undamaged then.
This is the second weeping spruce we’ve planted. The deer stripped the first one, two winters ago, by rubbing their horns against its trunk. I protected the second tree through its first winter by building a fortress of chicken wire around it, as impenetrable as most U.S. embassies in foreign countries.
But this year, I was one day late installing the fortress.
I regret to say that I muttered a string of undeleted expletives that once-President Richard Nixon might have envied.
The deer also nibbled the buds off all our roses. Ate all the foliage off a young cut-leaf maple. And chomped a thriving young hawthorn tree back to a hawthorn bush.
And yet I still get a thrill, watching them saunter across our lawn in the evening dusk.
Deer and mice are a mixed blessing. The story of creation says that God made all the creatures, and declared them good. But perhaps goodness depends on its interaction with other elements of creation.
The prophet Isaiah visualized lions and lambs lying down together. Ideally, he believed, all God’s creatures – including humans – should live together in harmony.
I’m willing to make some sacrifices, so that the animals can continue to thrive.
I just wish those animals would try equally hard to live in harmony with me.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – In a list of historical events, Jim Taylor found this. “JFK Announces Air and Navel Blockade of Cuba (1962)”
Dan Nighswander of Winnipeg, Manitoba found this in Rumors. "I’m a child of the 150s." He asks, “Is this the year or some sect I haven't heard about.”
Dan, it’s a sect known as “The Fraternal Fellowship of Obsolete Old Fogies,” and it has been mentioned from time to time here on Rumors. I was about to say, “its activities have been reported,” but since it doesn’t actually do anything, it’s hard to report on. And it doesn’t believe in anything except the menu for the next meal.
Stephani Keer got these from J. Leno.
* Dealers wanted to sell copiers, printers and fax machines. Real business with real prophets.
* Church panel applauds mandatory volunteering.
* Busy schedules hurt Overworkers Anonymous
* Dead couple kept to themselves
* For sale: House on private cuddle sac
* Electric hospital bed with trampoline, like new, $750
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 at shaw.ca (change the “at to the symbol and remove the spaces.)
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Wish I’d Said That! – Change of opinion is often the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge.
source unknown via Mary in Oman
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Frank Fisher via Evelyn McLachlan
It is discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
Noel Coward via Jim Taylor
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We Get Letters – George Brigham of Nottinghamshire, England writes: Your piece yesterday about United/Untied churches reminded me of one Palm Sunday long ago. We didn't know the young man who'd expressed an interest in training as a preacher was dyslexic. He read the story of the disciples going to the village to collect a colt very well, except that every time he should have read untie, or a variation of it, he read instead unite, hence:
“Unite it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, "Why are you uniting it?" tell him, "The Lord needs it." Those who were sent went ahead and found it just as he had told them. As they were uniting the colt, its owners asked them "Why are you uniting the colt?" They replied, "The Lord needs it."..... Luke 19.30b ff
Velia Watts of Edmonton, Alberta and her husband were travelling in the San Diego area. He was flipping around the web and came upon a listing for the “Church of Steel.” It is a tattoo parlor!!
Virginia Rickeman of Bethel, Maine writes: The "veterinarian" story may or may not be apocryphal. I live in a large old house given to our church nearly 50 years ago with the stipulation that the church use it as a parsonage. Those who bequeathed it to us were a man and his sister. He made his money on "girly shows" in the big bad city of Boston. His sister acted as his secretary. To my knowledge, the church had no qualms about accepting it....
I wonder if this has anything to do with the church needing to be in the world but not of it. I'm content to let God sort it all out.
Fran Ota got this from Anna Murdock who lives in the eastern US.
“My aunt had given me a box of about 40 little notebooks that once belonged to my grandfather (who was an obsessive/compulsive). They were all about the size of an IPOD and were crammed full of notes. Not just the days of his life, but the minutes and seconds as well.
“In one tiny notebook, he listed every single ache and pain that he had. Another notebook listed every chicken he ever owned, mentioned their names, what, how, when and where they died. Yet another one listed every article of clothing that he purchased, what size, the type of material, the date purchased and of course, how much he paid for them.
“But one of my very favorite books was labelled "Where I Keep Important Information". One entry read "The list of decent ministers is filed under 'D' in my files."
“Unfortunately, there was no "D" in his files!!!! "
Loretta Romankewicz writes: “I have another version of Sally drawing the Nativity Scene. There's a little fat man in the corner of her picture. When asked who that is, Sally replies, ‘That's Round John Virgin’."
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Character lines!”)
This from Jim Spinks:
* Chickens: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead.
* Committee: A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.
* Dust: Mud with the juice squeezed out.
* Egotist: Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.
* Gossip: Never tell a lie if the truth will do more damage.
* Mosquito: An insect that makes you like flies better.
* Raisin: Grape with a sunburn.
* Secret: Something you tell to one person at a time.
* Skeleton: A bunch of bones with the person scraped off.
* Toothache: The pain that drives you to extraction.
* Tomorrow: One of the greatest labor saving devices of today.
* Yawn: An honest opinion openly expressed.
* Wrinkles: Something other people have. You have character lines.
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Bottom of the Barrel – This from Jay Sprout of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
A burglar broke into a house and shined his flashlight around looking for valuables. He picked up a CD player when a strange, disembodied voice echoed from the dark saying: "Jesus is watching you."
He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked off his flashlight and froze. When he heard nothing more he continued his search for stuff worth stealing.
Then he heard again: "Jesus is watching you." Freaked out, he shined his light around frantically. Finally, in the corner of the room his light beam came to rest on a parrot.
"Did you say that?" he hissed at the parrot.
"Yep," the parrot confessed, then squawked, "I'm just trying to warn you that he's watching you."
The burglar relaxed. "Warn me, huh? Who in the world are you?"
"Moses," replied the bird.
"Moses?" the burglar laughed. "What kind of people would name a bird 'Moses'?"
"The kind that would name a Rottweiler 'Jesus'."
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Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
(NOTE: If possible, the readers should be two women.)
Reader 1: This is the story of Ruth and Naomi. It’s found in the Bible in the book of Ruth.
Reader 2: It’s a powerful story about the courage, strength and faithfulness of two women who found themselves destitute and starving.
1: In biblical days, a woman had only two ways to find a home, security, food – all the things we take for granted. She was either some man’s daughter or some man’s wife. If she had some relatives they might help her out, but basically a woman on her own would simply starve. Ruth was not only a widow without relatives, she was a foreigner.
2: Two things need explaining before we start. Near the end of the story, Ruth goes and deliberately seduces a man named Boaz by uncovering his genitals while he is sleeping. In the story, it says Ruth uncovered his “feet,” but feet was a euphemism for genitals. You will need to decide for yourself whether she did something immoral.
1: The story is in the Bible, not because it’s a story of women’s courage, but because Ruth turns out to be the great, great grandmother of King David. And for Christians the story was important because Jesus traced his ancestry back to King David, and therefore back to a foreign widow named Ruth.
2: So. Are we ready to tell the story?
1: There was a terrible famine in the land of Judah. There had been no rain for years. Naomi’s husband decided to go to the land of Moab, where the harvests had been good. So Naomi, her husband and two sons, took the long walk to the land of Moab.
2: Things went fairly well in Moab. They hand enough to eat. And the two sons found wives. Things seemed to be just fine.
1: But then Naomi’s husband died. Soon after that, her two sons also died. And there was Naomi with her two daughter’s-in-law, Ruth and Orpah. Three widows, who had no way of earning a living.
2: In her desperation, Naomi announced that she was going to take the long walk back to Judah. “At least I have a few relatives there,” she said.
1: “We’re going with you,” said the two younger women.
2: “Don’t even think of it,” said Naomi. “Stay here. Here at least you have a few relatives that might help you. Here at least you might find new husbands.”
1: Orpah agreed. She kissed Naomi and headed back home.
2: But not Ruth. Ruth had developed a deep love for her mother-in-law. And she sang this song to Naomi.
1: Don’t ask me now to leave you
Or to return from following after you.
For wherever you go, I will go.
Wherever you live, I will live.
Your people shall me my people,
And your God, my God.
Where you die, there I will die,
And there will I be buried.
I swear. May God be my witness and my judge,
If anything but death,
Keeps us apart.
2: And so Ruth went with Naomi back to Judah. The famine was over and things were a little better there now, but still, the only thing that kept the two women alive was Ruth out in the grain fields, gleaning, picking up whatever little heads of grain had been left by the harvester. It was backbreaking work, but Ruth was determined to keep her and her mother-in-law alive.
1: Naomi knew it was a only a temporary solution. When the harvest was over, there would be nothing. So she hatched a plan to have Ruth deliberately seduce a distant cousin of hers, a man named Boaz. If it worked, Boaz would marry Ruth and everything would be fine again.
2: And that is where today’s scripture reading begins. A reading from the book of Ruth.
(SHORT PAUSE)
1: Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, spoke to her.
2: "My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been gleaning grain. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to Boaz until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do."
1:"All that you tell me I will do."
2: So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, God made her conceive, and she bore a son.
1: Then the women said to Naomi:
2: "Blessed be God, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin. May God’s name be renowned in Israel! This newborn child shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him."
1: Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse.
2: The women of the neighborhood gave the baby a name, saying, "A child has been born to Naomi."
1: They named the baby Obed. He became the father of Jesse, the father of David.
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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 at shaw.ca. (change the “at” to the “at” sign – you know the “a” with the circle around it. I’m trying to slow down the spammers.) Then 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:
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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 at shaw.ca.
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Preaching Materials for November 1, 2009
R U M O R S #573
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2009-10-25
October 25, 2009
FUNDAMENTALS OF THE FAITH
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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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NOTE: From time to time we get letters asking if I could get Rumors out a little earlier for those who need to plan ahead. When Jim and I looked at this as realistically as possible, the best we could do is point you to the blog. You’ll find Rumors posted there anytime during the last half of the week. Occasionally as late as Saturday night, more often as early as Wednesday afternoon. This one is going in on Thursday night. Please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list…
http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
…and check there if you need it earlier.
And if an issue of Rumors goes missing, you can go and find it there. And if you need back issues, that’s where to find ‘em.
Thanks.
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The Story – the central verb
Rumors – being right
Soft Edges – giving up our roads
Bloopers – the untied cruch
We Get Letters – shampoo in a bird bath
Mirabile Dictu! – thumpitty thump thump
Bottom of the Barrel – the thousand dollar offering
Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Mark 12:28-34
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 – Little Jessica knew all about angels and halos.
“The halos are little circles over their heads, and angels have to walk carefully and they have to walk slowly, so the halos don’t get crooked.”
“What do the angels do if the halo falls off?” asked Jessica’s mom.
“They go to Wal-Mart and they buy another one.”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, November 1st, which is Proper 26 [31]
* Ruth 1:1-18 or Deuteronomy 6:1-9
* Psalm 146 or Psalm 119:1-8
* Hebrews 9:11-14
* Mark 12:28-34
If you are observing All Saints Day on November 1st, these are the readings:
* Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 or Isaiah 25:6-9
* Psalm 24
* Revelation 21:1-6a
* John 11:32-44
Ruth 1:1-18 – This is episode one of the Ruth and Naomi saga – a story of power and drama that deserves more attention than we’ve given it. We’re suggesting that it be given major attention next week. That way we can tell the whole story in one piece.
But we might excerpt that beautiful poem that Ruth says to Naomi. Bev and I, like so many couples, had that read at our wedding 51 years ago, even though the minister objected that it was between two women. That didn’t matter to us then and it matters even less now when we know that the love between two women can be everything that the love between a man and a woman can be.
It’s as much sentimentality as anything that has me liking the King James version, but the new Inclusive Bible comes close.
Where you go, I will go;
Where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people will be my people,
And your God, my God.
Where you die, I’ll die there too,
And I will be buried there beside you.
I swear, may YHWH be my witness and my judge –
That not even death will keep us apart.
Psalm 146 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 Who can you trust these days?
Only God. Forever and ever.
2 You can put your faith in God as long as you live.
God will never let you down.
3 Do not put your trust in any government.
You cannot count on them.
4 Human life is short, but governments are shorter.
With each election, their policies change;
their promises dry up faster than morning dew.
5 Put your trust in God;
for eternal confidence,
count on the one who knows eternity.
6 What human agency can claim to have created the earth?
What human agency can claim to care for it?
7 Look and see those whom God chooses to help:
To feed the hungry; to set free the prisoners;
8 To give sight to the blind; to let the lame walk;
to grant liberty to the oppressed;
9 Those who always take care of their own concerns
are brought down by their own ambitions.
God cares for the strangers, the widows, the orphans–
God watches over those who cannot watch out for themselves.
10 Can any human authority make that claim?
That is why God rules over all creation.
Trust in God forever!
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Publications.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Hebrews 9:11-14 – I don’t pretend to understand the Hebrew sacrificial system. The whole culture seems to have been living with a huge sense of guilt. Maybe we could do with a bit of that – a sense that we do carry the blame for what is happening in the world especially the suffering from several diseases and starvation n Africa.
And I’m quite sure, if we really wanted to, we could find a better solution than killing an animal or a human, even if the human was Jesus of Nazareth.
The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – Mark 12:28-34
Jim sends his regrets. For several good reasons, he’s not able to provide us with his “blurb” this week.
Ralph says –
There’s a cultural difference that pops out at me reading this passage. In first century Jewish culture (and many others) religious discussion was a bit like a tennis match. In this particular passage, Jesus aces the scribes and the game is over. No one dared to challenge Jesus to another match. Jesus wins and gloats. The others lose and slink away into the shadows feeling humiliated and defeated.
Thinking of it that way bothers many of us. We’d argue that such discussions should not be about verbal jousting – not about winning and losing – but about discovering the truth.
And the truth Jesus articulates here is fundamental – foundational – and any concern about who was winning and who was losing would only distract us.
The verb in both of Jesus’ declarations is “love.” And the opportunity here is not to define “love” at great length but to tell stories of love in real life. Especially stories of the love of neighbor – miserable, cranky, hard-to-love neighbors – which can be really tough at times.
In the best-selling novel, “The Shack” by Paul Young, the grieving angry father whose young daughter had been abducted, raped and murdered, has to learn how to love his own father who abused him, God, who allowed it all to happen, and finally, the man who killed his daughter. The love does not imply liking, or accepting, but is the essence of forgiveness that makes it possible for the man to live again.
The story of Ruth and Naomi, “Two Brave Women” is found in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year B,” page 220. You might use this on either November 1 or 8, because that’s the two Sundays on which the story occurs in the lectionary. We are suggesting the full story on the 8th.
A story based on the gospel reading, “The Most Important Rules” is found on page 223.
If you don’t yet own this set of three children’s Bible story 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
Or, if you live in Canada or the US, simply pick up the phone and dial 1 800 663 2775.
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Rumors – Among the life-changing experiences that I’ve known was six weeks of study in Israel some years ago. For myself, I brought back only one memento – aside from a head full of new ideas and insights.
I brought for myself a mezuzah. That’s the little container which practicing Jews nail to their doorpost. It contains a little slip of paper on which is printed, in Hebrew, the Shema. “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.”
I found myself filled with a deep emotion as I nailed it to the inside door of my home here in Kelowna. I know I will take it with me wherever I move.
Perhaps it has to do with connections. Connections to that vast and holy tradition that was seared by the desert sun into a faith that provides the essence of life, if only we would take it, apply it, believe it, live it, be it.
Or maybe it had to do with answers. Here is one good, solid answer I can stick on my door post, and touch it each time I go out into the world, to remind me that I “know.”
In this week’s Gospel reading, the Sadducee baits Jesus. Jesus gives a traditional response with some elaborations. The Sadducee says, “Hey! You got it right!” Then Jesus pats the Sadducee on the head saying, “And you’re getting warm.”
Are they playing the traditional men’s game of “being right”?
I’ve heard it called the “men’s disease” – the need to have an “answer” for every question even if we have to make one up on the spot. I’d like to claim I don’t suffer from that particular affliction, but several women in my life read this essay. They might even argue that writers and editors give vocational expression to that syndrome.
Jim Taylor once had a bumper sticker which read, “Editors have the last word.”
Another colleague, which shall remain nameless, insists that research has been done which proves that a man’s penis actually shrinks when he says, “I don’t know.” Be that as it may, it is true that most men have a strong personal need to “know” and to be “right.”
Is that why I tacked that mezuzah to my door? Like that Sadducee, I have the right answer. I know!
As long as I don’t open that mezuzah and read the Shema – as long as I don’t remember that the operative word is “love,” I can live with that fantasy.
Like the Sadducee, I live with the painful, hopeful sadness. I am “not far from the Kingdom.”
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Giving Up Our Roads
Somewhere along the way, we made a terrible mistake.
That realization came to me the other night, as I was walking the dog down the centre of a deserted road. You would think, to look at the blacktop rolled out so authoritatively, that the road had been here forever. But when you see that it wiggles to avoid trees that have stood in that place longer than the road has existed, when you see how it detours around rock outcrops, you realize that the road is a relative latecomer.
In fact, most of our roads were foot trails long before they were roads. That’s particularly evident in old cities – like, say, London, England – where any resemblance to a grid system is laughable.
The evolution of roads is most visible in unplanned communities like Bonavista, in Newfoundland. The first houses were built by fishermen, along the beach. Then merchants and tradespeople built houses on the marshland behind the beach. Wherever they could find lumps of higher ground, naturally. Paths evolved to connect the houses.
Today, those wandering footpaths have become streets. A map of Bonavista resembles a child’s random scribbles.
Because the roads were never planned as roads.
Neither were most of ours. People walked those trails first. Later came horses and carts, but human feet still had the right of way.
And then, somehow, we ceded our rights to the car. Now we have to get out of their way.
Instead, we build special roadways for pedestrians. We call them sidewalks – places where people can walk without fear of being run down by a four-wheeled, gas-guzzling tin can that weighs two tons.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a child of the 150s – I love cars. But I worry that we have granted them a godlike status they don’t deserve.
The situation reminds me of the biblical story of Jacob and Esau. Esau, you may remember, was the older brother. By law and tradition, he would inherit his father’s lands.
But Jacob felt jealous. So one day when Esau came home from hunting, ravenous, Jacob tempted him with a simmering pot of savoury stew. “If you want this,” Jacob bargained, “give me your birthright.”
Esau thought it was a joke. “Sure,” he said, knowing that mere words could not alter the fact that he was his father’s firstborn.
Except that, in the end, he did lose his birthright.
So did we.
We gave up our right to own the roads. We allowed gimlet-eyed drivers, right foot firmly planted on the gas pedal, obsessed with getting to their destination a few seconds sooner – a tribe to which I often belong – to usurp our rightful place.
Not only is the car a primary user of carbon-based fuel, it has become a parasite that has invaded our body politic. Life without the car has become unimaginable.
The dog and I squeeze over onto the shoulder as a car roars by. I think I know how Esau might have felt.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Susan Heydt reports that a church in her community last Sunday the choir was slated to sing "Sin Ye, Joyfully."
Susan, is that anything like Luther’s injunction to “sin boldly” that’s so often quoted out of context?
Lois Carey of North Bay, Ontario, saw an announcement about a “goad to support this fund in 2009.”
Well Lois, many congregations need a fair bit of goading.
Elisabeth Jones of Montreal says she did this herself some years ago when she was a church secretary in Calgary. She advertised a Lenten Bible Study which would “explore
Jesus' journey to the cross via the Road to Calgary."
On another occasion, Elisabeth typed a note about an event called, "The Future of the Untied Church"
Elisabeth, one of the things that unites all those churches that have “United” in their names is that it has been typed as “untied” many times. I’ve gone one step further myself and found myself writing about the “untied cruch.”
Do you suppose the Spirit is trying to tell us something?
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 at shaw.ca (change the “at to the symbol and remove the spaces.)
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Wish I’d Said That! – It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
source unknown via Margaret Wood
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau via Mary of Bahrain
Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today, it's called golf.
Mark Twain via Mary of Bahrain
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We Get Letters – This section of Rumors serves as a place to put stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Such as this note from Cliff Boldt of Courtnay, BC. He says, “Churchill got around calling people liars when he coined the phrase ‘terminological inexactitude.’”
Velia Watts of Edmonton, Alberta writes: “A church acquaintance tells a story about her four-year-old granddaughter. She was questioning a younger cousin as to whether he had been baptized.”
“He didn't know what that meant so she explained it all to him: ‘It's when this guy picks you up and gives you a shampoo in a bird bath.’”
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “thumpitty thump thump!”)
This piece called “Martin the German” by Chris P. Matthy comes from April Dailey and somebody named N. Martin. April says it’s for “10/25 Reformation Sunday for us Lutheran Types.”
Because my weird mind always makes the most inappropriate connections, the last verse of this recalls the student who declared in a term paper that Luther “nailed his feces to the church door.” Never mind. Just sing it and don’t think of such things.
(to the tune of “Frosty the Snowman”)
Martin the German was a sorry, mixed up soul,
‘Cause he thought it odd that a loving God
Would condemn him straight to hell.
Martin the German even took a sacred vow
When a lightning strike nearly took his life
But St. Anne stepped in somehow.
It must have seemed like magic when
Old Habakkuk he found,
‘Cause when he read God saves by faith
He began to dance around.
O, Martin the German felt reborn again that day,
And he spread the word from old Wittenberg
All the way to Rome, they say.
Thumpitty thump thump, thumpitty thump thump,
Nail them to the door;
Thumpitty thump thump, thumpitty thump thump,
Hear those Theses roar!
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Bottom of the Barrel – Fred Brailey of Orangeville, Ontario sends this probably apocryphal item, and wonders whether the church can accept such ill-gotten gains. Fred, in the church where I worship, we’ve not had a lot of trouble with people putting thousand dollar offerings on the plate.
One Sunday, in counting the money in the weekly offering, the pastor found a pink envelope containing $1,000. It happened again the next week. The following Sunday, he watched as the offering was collected and saw a little old lady put the distinctive pink envelope in the plate. This went on for weeks until the pastor, overcome by curiosity, approached her. "Ma'am,” he said. “I couldn't help but notice that you put $1,000 a week in the collection plate." "Why yes," she replied, "every week my son sends me money, and I give some of it to the church." "That's wonderful, how much does he send you?" "$10,000 a week." "Your son is very successful! What does he do for a living?" "He is a veterinarian," "That is an honorable profession," the pastor said. "Where does he practice?" "In Nevada,” the little old lady said proudly. “He has two cat houses in Las Vegas and one in Reno "
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Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Mark 12:28-34
Reader 1: It sounds like a tennis match.
Reader 2: What sounds like a tennis match?
1: The scripture we’re supposed to read today.
2: Where do you get that? It’s Jesus talking to a bunch of Sadducees.
1: Sure, but it’s the traditional men’s game. Let’s prove that I am smarter than you. The clue is in the first verse. “Seeing that he answered them well.” And then in the last verse. Jesus serves an ace and it’s game over. It says it right there. “After that no one dared to ask him any question.”
2: Well, maybe. But you are missing the point of the passage. It’s not about who beats who in a debating game. Or at least, that shouldn’t matter to us now. It’s that Jesus gets down to the bare bones fundamental. The basic idea that is the foundation of the Christian faith. Love of God and love of neighbor. You don’t get more foundational than that.
1: In other words, if we don’t get today’s passage memorized and plugged into our psyche, we’re going to fry in hell?
2: You’re being ridiculous and you know it. Read the passage.
1: OK, OK.
SLIGHT PAUSE1: One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another. Seeing that Jesus answered them well, the scribe asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?"2: "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."1: "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,' – this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."2: "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
1: After that no one dared to ask him any question.
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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 at shaw.ca. (change the “at” to the “at” sign – you know the “a” with the circle around it. I’m trying to slow down the spammers.) Then 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 at shaw.ca.
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
2009-10-25
October 25, 2009
FUNDAMENTALS OF THE FAITH
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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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NOTE: From time to time we get letters asking if I could get Rumors out a little earlier for those who need to plan ahead. When Jim and I looked at this as realistically as possible, the best we could do is point you to the blog. You’ll find Rumors posted there anytime during the last half of the week. Occasionally as late as Saturday night, more often as early as Wednesday afternoon. This one is going in on Thursday night. Please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list…
http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
…and check there if you need it earlier.
And if an issue of Rumors goes missing, you can go and find it there. And if you need back issues, that’s where to find ‘em.
Thanks.
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The Story – the central verb
Rumors – being right
Soft Edges – giving up our roads
Bloopers – the untied cruch
We Get Letters – shampoo in a bird bath
Mirabile Dictu! – thumpitty thump thump
Bottom of the Barrel – the thousand dollar offering
Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Mark 12:28-34
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 – Little Jessica knew all about angels and halos.
“The halos are little circles over their heads, and angels have to walk carefully and they have to walk slowly, so the halos don’t get crooked.”
“What do the angels do if the halo falls off?” asked Jessica’s mom.
“They go to Wal-Mart and they buy another one.”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, November 1st, which is Proper 26 [31]
* Ruth 1:1-18 or Deuteronomy 6:1-9
* Psalm 146 or Psalm 119:1-8
* Hebrews 9:11-14
* Mark 12:28-34
If you are observing All Saints Day on November 1st, these are the readings:
* Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 or Isaiah 25:6-9
* Psalm 24
* Revelation 21:1-6a
* John 11:32-44
Ruth 1:1-18 – This is episode one of the Ruth and Naomi saga – a story of power and drama that deserves more attention than we’ve given it. We’re suggesting that it be given major attention next week. That way we can tell the whole story in one piece.
But we might excerpt that beautiful poem that Ruth says to Naomi. Bev and I, like so many couples, had that read at our wedding 51 years ago, even though the minister objected that it was between two women. That didn’t matter to us then and it matters even less now when we know that the love between two women can be everything that the love between a man and a woman can be.
It’s as much sentimentality as anything that has me liking the King James version, but the new Inclusive Bible comes close.
Where you go, I will go;
Where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people will be my people,
And your God, my God.
Where you die, I’ll die there too,
And I will be buried there beside you.
I swear, may YHWH be my witness and my judge –
That not even death will keep us apart.
Psalm 146 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 Who can you trust these days?
Only God. Forever and ever.
2 You can put your faith in God as long as you live.
God will never let you down.
3 Do not put your trust in any government.
You cannot count on them.
4 Human life is short, but governments are shorter.
With each election, their policies change;
their promises dry up faster than morning dew.
5 Put your trust in God;
for eternal confidence,
count on the one who knows eternity.
6 What human agency can claim to have created the earth?
What human agency can claim to care for it?
7 Look and see those whom God chooses to help:
To feed the hungry; to set free the prisoners;
8 To give sight to the blind; to let the lame walk;
to grant liberty to the oppressed;
9 Those who always take care of their own concerns
are brought down by their own ambitions.
God cares for the strangers, the widows, the orphans–
God watches over those who cannot watch out for themselves.
10 Can any human authority make that claim?
That is why God rules over all creation.
Trust in God forever!
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Publications.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Hebrews 9:11-14 – I don’t pretend to understand the Hebrew sacrificial system. The whole culture seems to have been living with a huge sense of guilt. Maybe we could do with a bit of that – a sense that we do carry the blame for what is happening in the world especially the suffering from several diseases and starvation n Africa.
And I’m quite sure, if we really wanted to, we could find a better solution than killing an animal or a human, even if the human was Jesus of Nazareth.
The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – Mark 12:28-34
Jim sends his regrets. For several good reasons, he’s not able to provide us with his “blurb” this week.
Ralph says –
There’s a cultural difference that pops out at me reading this passage. In first century Jewish culture (and many others) religious discussion was a bit like a tennis match. In this particular passage, Jesus aces the scribes and the game is over. No one dared to challenge Jesus to another match. Jesus wins and gloats. The others lose and slink away into the shadows feeling humiliated and defeated.
Thinking of it that way bothers many of us. We’d argue that such discussions should not be about verbal jousting – not about winning and losing – but about discovering the truth.
And the truth Jesus articulates here is fundamental – foundational – and any concern about who was winning and who was losing would only distract us.
The verb in both of Jesus’ declarations is “love.” And the opportunity here is not to define “love” at great length but to tell stories of love in real life. Especially stories of the love of neighbor – miserable, cranky, hard-to-love neighbors – which can be really tough at times.
In the best-selling novel, “The Shack” by Paul Young, the grieving angry father whose young daughter had been abducted, raped and murdered, has to learn how to love his own father who abused him, God, who allowed it all to happen, and finally, the man who killed his daughter. The love does not imply liking, or accepting, but is the essence of forgiveness that makes it possible for the man to live again.
The story of Ruth and Naomi, “Two Brave Women” is found in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year B,” page 220. You might use this on either November 1 or 8, because that’s the two Sundays on which the story occurs in the lectionary. We are suggesting the full story on the 8th.
A story based on the gospel reading, “The Most Important Rules” is found on page 223.
If you don’t yet own this set of three children’s Bible story 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
Or, if you live in Canada or the US, simply pick up the phone and dial 1 800 663 2775.
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Rumors – Among the life-changing experiences that I’ve known was six weeks of study in Israel some years ago. For myself, I brought back only one memento – aside from a head full of new ideas and insights.
I brought for myself a mezuzah. That’s the little container which practicing Jews nail to their doorpost. It contains a little slip of paper on which is printed, in Hebrew, the Shema. “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.”
I found myself filled with a deep emotion as I nailed it to the inside door of my home here in Kelowna. I know I will take it with me wherever I move.
Perhaps it has to do with connections. Connections to that vast and holy tradition that was seared by the desert sun into a faith that provides the essence of life, if only we would take it, apply it, believe it, live it, be it.
Or maybe it had to do with answers. Here is one good, solid answer I can stick on my door post, and touch it each time I go out into the world, to remind me that I “know.”
In this week’s Gospel reading, the Sadducee baits Jesus. Jesus gives a traditional response with some elaborations. The Sadducee says, “Hey! You got it right!” Then Jesus pats the Sadducee on the head saying, “And you’re getting warm.”
Are they playing the traditional men’s game of “being right”?
I’ve heard it called the “men’s disease” – the need to have an “answer” for every question even if we have to make one up on the spot. I’d like to claim I don’t suffer from that particular affliction, but several women in my life read this essay. They might even argue that writers and editors give vocational expression to that syndrome.
Jim Taylor once had a bumper sticker which read, “Editors have the last word.”
Another colleague, which shall remain nameless, insists that research has been done which proves that a man’s penis actually shrinks when he says, “I don’t know.” Be that as it may, it is true that most men have a strong personal need to “know” and to be “right.”
Is that why I tacked that mezuzah to my door? Like that Sadducee, I have the right answer. I know!
As long as I don’t open that mezuzah and read the Shema – as long as I don’t remember that the operative word is “love,” I can live with that fantasy.
Like the Sadducee, I live with the painful, hopeful sadness. I am “not far from the Kingdom.”
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Giving Up Our Roads
Somewhere along the way, we made a terrible mistake.
That realization came to me the other night, as I was walking the dog down the centre of a deserted road. You would think, to look at the blacktop rolled out so authoritatively, that the road had been here forever. But when you see that it wiggles to avoid trees that have stood in that place longer than the road has existed, when you see how it detours around rock outcrops, you realize that the road is a relative latecomer.
In fact, most of our roads were foot trails long before they were roads. That’s particularly evident in old cities – like, say, London, England – where any resemblance to a grid system is laughable.
The evolution of roads is most visible in unplanned communities like Bonavista, in Newfoundland. The first houses were built by fishermen, along the beach. Then merchants and tradespeople built houses on the marshland behind the beach. Wherever they could find lumps of higher ground, naturally. Paths evolved to connect the houses.
Today, those wandering footpaths have become streets. A map of Bonavista resembles a child’s random scribbles.
Because the roads were never planned as roads.
Neither were most of ours. People walked those trails first. Later came horses and carts, but human feet still had the right of way.
And then, somehow, we ceded our rights to the car. Now we have to get out of their way.
Instead, we build special roadways for pedestrians. We call them sidewalks – places where people can walk without fear of being run down by a four-wheeled, gas-guzzling tin can that weighs two tons.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a child of the 150s – I love cars. But I worry that we have granted them a godlike status they don’t deserve.
The situation reminds me of the biblical story of Jacob and Esau. Esau, you may remember, was the older brother. By law and tradition, he would inherit his father’s lands.
But Jacob felt jealous. So one day when Esau came home from hunting, ravenous, Jacob tempted him with a simmering pot of savoury stew. “If you want this,” Jacob bargained, “give me your birthright.”
Esau thought it was a joke. “Sure,” he said, knowing that mere words could not alter the fact that he was his father’s firstborn.
Except that, in the end, he did lose his birthright.
So did we.
We gave up our right to own the roads. We allowed gimlet-eyed drivers, right foot firmly planted on the gas pedal, obsessed with getting to their destination a few seconds sooner – a tribe to which I often belong – to usurp our rightful place.
Not only is the car a primary user of carbon-based fuel, it has become a parasite that has invaded our body politic. Life without the car has become unimaginable.
The dog and I squeeze over onto the shoulder as a car roars by. I think I know how Esau might have felt.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Susan Heydt reports that a church in her community last Sunday the choir was slated to sing "Sin Ye, Joyfully."
Susan, is that anything like Luther’s injunction to “sin boldly” that’s so often quoted out of context?
Lois Carey of North Bay, Ontario, saw an announcement about a “goad to support this fund in 2009.”
Well Lois, many congregations need a fair bit of goading.
Elisabeth Jones of Montreal says she did this herself some years ago when she was a church secretary in Calgary. She advertised a Lenten Bible Study which would “explore
Jesus' journey to the cross via the Road to Calgary."
On another occasion, Elisabeth typed a note about an event called, "The Future of the Untied Church"
Elisabeth, one of the things that unites all those churches that have “United” in their names is that it has been typed as “untied” many times. I’ve gone one step further myself and found myself writing about the “untied cruch.”
Do you suppose the Spirit is trying to tell us something?
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 at shaw.ca (change the “at to the symbol and remove the spaces.)
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Wish I’d Said That! – It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
source unknown via Margaret Wood
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau via Mary of Bahrain
Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today, it's called golf.
Mark Twain via Mary of Bahrain
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We Get Letters – This section of Rumors serves as a place to put stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Such as this note from Cliff Boldt of Courtnay, BC. He says, “Churchill got around calling people liars when he coined the phrase ‘terminological inexactitude.’”
Velia Watts of Edmonton, Alberta writes: “A church acquaintance tells a story about her four-year-old granddaughter. She was questioning a younger cousin as to whether he had been baptized.”
“He didn't know what that meant so she explained it all to him: ‘It's when this guy picks you up and gives you a shampoo in a bird bath.’”
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “thumpitty thump thump!”)
This piece called “Martin the German” by Chris P. Matthy comes from April Dailey and somebody named N. Martin. April says it’s for “10/25 Reformation Sunday for us Lutheran Types.”
Because my weird mind always makes the most inappropriate connections, the last verse of this recalls the student who declared in a term paper that Luther “nailed his feces to the church door.” Never mind. Just sing it and don’t think of such things.
(to the tune of “Frosty the Snowman”)
Martin the German was a sorry, mixed up soul,
‘Cause he thought it odd that a loving God
Would condemn him straight to hell.
Martin the German even took a sacred vow
When a lightning strike nearly took his life
But St. Anne stepped in somehow.
It must have seemed like magic when
Old Habakkuk he found,
‘Cause when he read God saves by faith
He began to dance around.
O, Martin the German felt reborn again that day,
And he spread the word from old Wittenberg
All the way to Rome, they say.
Thumpitty thump thump, thumpitty thump thump,
Nail them to the door;
Thumpitty thump thump, thumpitty thump thump,
Hear those Theses roar!
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Bottom of the Barrel – Fred Brailey of Orangeville, Ontario sends this probably apocryphal item, and wonders whether the church can accept such ill-gotten gains. Fred, in the church where I worship, we’ve not had a lot of trouble with people putting thousand dollar offerings on the plate.
One Sunday, in counting the money in the weekly offering, the pastor found a pink envelope containing $1,000. It happened again the next week. The following Sunday, he watched as the offering was collected and saw a little old lady put the distinctive pink envelope in the plate. This went on for weeks until the pastor, overcome by curiosity, approached her. "Ma'am,” he said. “I couldn't help but notice that you put $1,000 a week in the collection plate." "Why yes," she replied, "every week my son sends me money, and I give some of it to the church." "That's wonderful, how much does he send you?" "$10,000 a week." "Your son is very successful! What does he do for a living?" "He is a veterinarian," "That is an honorable profession," the pastor said. "Where does he practice?" "In Nevada,” the little old lady said proudly. “He has two cat houses in Las Vegas and one in Reno "
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Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Mark 12:28-34
Reader 1: It sounds like a tennis match.
Reader 2: What sounds like a tennis match?
1: The scripture we’re supposed to read today.
2: Where do you get that? It’s Jesus talking to a bunch of Sadducees.
1: Sure, but it’s the traditional men’s game. Let’s prove that I am smarter than you. The clue is in the first verse. “Seeing that he answered them well.” And then in the last verse. Jesus serves an ace and it’s game over. It says it right there. “After that no one dared to ask him any question.”
2: Well, maybe. But you are missing the point of the passage. It’s not about who beats who in a debating game. Or at least, that shouldn’t matter to us now. It’s that Jesus gets down to the bare bones fundamental. The basic idea that is the foundation of the Christian faith. Love of God and love of neighbor. You don’t get more foundational than that.
1: In other words, if we don’t get today’s passage memorized and plugged into our psyche, we’re going to fry in hell?
2: You’re being ridiculous and you know it. Read the passage.
1: OK, OK.
SLIGHT PAUSE1: One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another. Seeing that Jesus answered them well, the scribe asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?"2: "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."1: "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,' – this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."2: "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
1: After that no one dared to ask him any question.
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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 at shaw.ca. (change the “at” to the “at” sign – you know the “a” with the circle around it. I’m trying to slow down the spammers.) Then 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:
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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 at shaw.ca.
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Preaching Materials for Ocober 25, 2009
R U M O R S # 572
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2009-10-18
October 18, 2009
THE IMPATIENCE OF JOB
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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. And if you need back issues, that’s where to find ‘em.
Thanks.
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The Story – why do bad things happen?
Rumors – blind folks who see
Soft Edges – the gentle giant
Bloopers – a minion or a minyan?
We Get Letters – what to tell a nine-year-old
Mirabile Dictu! – supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Bottom of the Barrel – they walked where they went
Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Extra Resource – Jim’s irreverent paraphrase of the Job story
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 Spinks.
In Sunday school little Kathy was drawing a Nativity picture. There were Mary and Joseph, shepherds and wise men. "What's that in the corner Kathy?" asked the teacher. "That's their TV, of course," replied Kathy.
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, October 25th, which is Proper 25 [30].
* Job 42:1-6, 10-17 or Jeremiah 31:7-9
* Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22) or Psalm 126
* Hebrews 7:23-28
* Mark 10:46-52
The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – Job 42:1-6, 10-17.
This is a somewhat longer issue of Rumors because it offers more resources on the Job story. The Reader’s Theatre offers a short summary of the story which could be used even if you don’t do the Reader’s Theatre thing. And following that is a short paraphrase of the Job story by Jim Taylor – short but still 15 minutes long if you were to use all of it.
Jim says –
We’ve been avoiding the Job story for the last four weeks, because the friends’ speeches about sin make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad look concise. But the story deserves to be told. How? Tell it – don’t read it!
How Job ended up in his miserable predicament (Chapters 1 and 2) is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether God and Satan played dice with Job’s fate, or whether he just happened to be around when the Wall Street of his time had an economic collapse.
Forget the cause – the important thing in Job is the falsity of the conventional conceptions offered as explanations:
1. God must be doing this for a good reason.
2. This can’t be unjust punishment, because that would make God unjust.
3. Punishment proves you must have done something wrong.
Now, aren’t those same ideas still being voiced? People who go through a mental breakdown, who get cancer or MS, are still looked at with suspicion – they must have done something to deserve this... You lost your pension; your investments crashed? You must have done something stupid... Your marriage failed? Which of you was playing around?
The end of the story was probably tacked on to provide a Hollywood ending. But it does make a point: as a result of his experiences, Job violated the cultural norms of his day. The Bible records the names of his daughters but not, interestingly, of his sons. And the daughters shared equally in his inheritance – an exceptional occurrence for those times.
Ralph says –
The reason it is important to hear the story of Job is because it helps us articulate a fundamentally human question. Why is it that “bad things happen to good people,” as Rabbi Harold Kushner asks so well in his little book?
The Book of Job doesn’t answer the question, but it does help us come to grips with it. We can all think of real scum bags who do very well and become very wealthy. And we all know genuinely good people who have never had two nickels to rub together. We think of ourselves when bad things happen and wonder what we have done to deserve this. And we know that the saying, “God never gives us more than we can handle,” is nonsense. We know people who have been totally destroyed by what has happened to them.
On the recent best-seller lists is a book called, “The Shack,” by Wm. Paul Young who approaches the question from another angle. Like my friend Julian of Norwich, he offers what seems like a simplistic response but which is deeply profound. The book has become a best seller, not because it is so well designed and written (it isn’t) but because it does a good job of helping us understand human suffering and God’s response.
God is love. God has created a world in which pain and sorrow and death are constant realities. And into that world God comes with love. The power and the weakness of love.
The story of Job flatly contradicts the idea that if you are totally faithful to God nothing bad will happen to you. Everything bad happens to Job and he is totally faithful.
I read what I have just written and I realize how grossly inadequate and facile it is. I hope you can do better.
Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22) – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 I will speak only good of my God;
I will not let a critical thought off my tongue.
2 For God has been good to me.
That is the good news I want you to know.
4 Yes, I have suffered like you.
I have known grief, and loss, and pain;
I have wondered where my next meal would come from,
and I have asked myself if anyone cared.
6 But through it all, God has been good to me.
God cared.
3 As we have shared in these experiences,
so let us share in giving the glory to God.
5 Put your hand in the hand of God,
and walk forward with confidence;
Turn your face towards God, and see clearly.
7 For though God will not, with a snap of the fingers,
turn all your troubles around,
God will, miraculously, put them into perspective;
God will make your mountains into molehills,
and your elephants into ants.
8 Trust, and see.
God makes a difference.
God is good.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Publications.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Hebrews 7:23-28 – It shows a gap in my understanding, that I can’t quite see the need for the exalting of Jesus as High Priest. That may be because I’ve been raised and nurtured in a very low-church background. But I’ve had the privilege of friendship with Roman Catholics and Anglo Catholics for whom the concept is deeply and profoundly significant and so I’m not prepared to write off this passage just because I don’t understand it.
Mark 10:46-52 – Does the story of blind Bartimaeus add anything to our understanding of the “why” about pain and suffering and horror? Perhaps Jesus’ immediate and total response might be a clue. It sent me to look up a quote from W.A. Tozer which Young offers in “The Shack.”
“An infinite God can give all of Himself [sic] to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.”
For children see “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year B.” It offers the story of Blind Bartimaeus on page 218. The story of Job, in a version that might be useful to both children and adults, is also found in Year B, on page 205.
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
Or, if you live in Canada or the US, simply pick up the phone and dial 1 800 663 2775.
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Rumors – When the lector reads the Blind Bartimaeus passage on Sunday, the congregation probably will not burst out laughing at the humor of it. But something smells funny about this story, so a bit of good-natured poking around might be fun.
Blind beggars were not exactly at the top of the social ladder in Jesus’ day. Bartimaeus was not on the “must invite” list of the social climbers in Jericho.
But just a minute. Peter names Jesus as the Messiah at Caesarea Philippi, and a few evil spirits know about his Messiahship, but this blind beggar is the first one to publically name Jesus as “Son of David,” which is what any aspiring Messiah would be known as.
And for this, Bartimaeus is told to shut his face. But as Alfred Doolittle told Professor Higgins, it is only middle class folks who can afford morality and manners. Bartimaeus has neither. All he has is his need, so keeps on yelling. And yelling.
So Jesus takes a deep breath and goes over to him. “OK, relax buddy. What do you want?”
“I want to see!”
Just a minute now. Let’s get this straight. The only one of the public who has the wit and wisdom to see that Jesus is the Messiah, says to this same Messiah, “I want to see.”
Where did he get this? Bartimaeus had not gone to the Synagogue library to check all the cross references in the holy books to see if Jesus was the Messiah. Blind beggars don’t often spend much time in expensive libraries.
Nor would Bartimaeus have high level discussions with the Scribes and Pharisees in the Temple courts. He wasn’t invited to their Bible study group.
How did he know? Well, he didn’t “know.” He took a flying leap, or he was trying to flatter Jesus or he had the gift of clairvoyance or he had an insight or God spoke to him. Take your pick.
One way or another he had the “sight” to see what nobody else could see. Once again God chuckles and reveals the holy through babes and beggars and bastards and buffoons.
And those of us who read a lot of books and even occasionally write a few just have to stand back, scratch our heads bald and notice that the folks we’ve just told to shut up; the ones we’ve out-argued or out-voted at church meetings, or the ones we’ve managed to ignore on the street corner, these are the “blind” folks who somehow see.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
The Gentle Giant
Wotan lives down the road from us. Wotan is a horse. At 20 years old, he still stands 18 hands tall. That puts him in some exclusive company. The Guinness Book of World Records lists the world’s tallest horse at just over 20 hands high (a “hand” measures four inches). But that horse died a year ago. The current claimant for the title is an Ontario Clydesdale named Poe, at 20.2 hands tall.
Regardless, Wotan is a very big horse. I stand 5’8” tall, and I have to look up at Wotan’s back.
The name Wotan is a variant spelling for Wodin, or Odin, the Norse god often depicted riding a huge eight-legged horse into battle.
Despite his size, this Wotan is amazingly gentle. He canters up to the fence when I come by, offering his head and neck for a quick rub. He could, if he wished, effortlessly kick the slats out of his fence, but he doesn’t.
For most of my life, I admit, I’ve been a little afraid of horses.
Once, when I was about eight, I saw a horse kick a man. I don’t know if the horse had a bad temper, or if the man had mistreated his mount. But as the man passed behind the horse on a mountain trail, the horse coiled up both hind legs and struck out. Its hooves caught the man squarely in the chest and catapulted him right off the trail and down the slope below.
He must have had several broken ribs. Perhaps more. I didn’t stay to watch. I ran from the scene as fast as an eight-year-old’s legs could carry me.
Later in life, I took a group of Scouts to visit the police stables at Sunnybrook Park in Toronto. I mentioned that incident to the sergeant guiding us around, as an explanation for my fears.
“They’re just so powerful,” I said.
He looked surprised. “They are,” he agreed, as the horse behind him snuffled his ear. “Fortunately, they don’t know it.”
Most of our images of power and strength come from two sources – monarchy and military.
So we think, perhaps, of Henry VIII, executing wives for failing to produce a male heir to the throne. Or of Emperor Nero, burning tarred Christians as torches for his garden parties.
Lewis Carroll satirized this kind of power, in Alice in Wonderland. The Queen of Hearts commanded “Off with his head!” at the slightest provocation.
Or else we think of military might – of tanks and bombs and massed legions crushing opposition the way a bulldozer crushes a buttercup.
It’s the power to coerce.
Such images lead us to think that power must be used to be useful. What’s the point of having a 400-horsepower car, if you never use all that power? What value is an army, if it grows fat and lazy in its barracks?
Wotan the horse reminds me that it is possible to have power without needing to use it, that it is possible to have power and still be gentle.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Shirley Hollett, who says she is from “the big land,” i.e. the Labrador, caught this, unfortunately, “before the bulletin got printed. Hymn: “Now Thank we Al Our God.”
You should have left it in, Shirley, because we’ve got a lot to thank our “A-one” God for.
Mark Perry of Oil City thought the announcement about his appointment in the local newspaper should have been “Interning Minister.” Instead it read, “Interring Minister.” Says Mark, “I guess they thought we were dying off fast and furious.”
Fred Roden points up a blooper in last week’s Rumors. I referred to the number or people required for a Hebrew service as a “minion,” when it should have been “minyan.”
A “minion” is some poorly salaried, overworked sad-sack, i.e. most Protestant clergy.
Wayne Seybert of Longmont, Colorado found these bloopers.
* For the group of ladies called “Moms Who Care” and pray for the children in school. When their meeting was cancelled one week: “There will be no Moms who care this week.”* A worm welcome to all who have come today.* Hymn: "I Love Thee My Ford."
Kendell Nordstrom of Beloit, Wisconsin has a new title. He was listed in the bulletin as "Bible stud leader." Says Kendall, “I think it has a nice ring to it.”
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 at shaw.ca (change the “at to the symbol and remove the spaces.)
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Wish I’d Said That! – The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell via Jim Taylor
If to err is human, I have daily proof of my humanity.
Jayne Whyte
Computers are useless; they can only give you answers.
Pablo Picasso via Kendell Nordstrom
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We Get Letters – Mary Lautensleger of Charlotte, North Carolina has a nine-year-old granddaughter who wants to know what a “reptile dysfunction" is? “What should I tell her?”
Mary, my grandkids are teenagers. I think they already know.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”) Courtesy of Fran Ota and Wilma Huston White.
Sung to the tune of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"When I was just ein junger Mann I studied canon law;While Erfurt was a challenge, it was just to please my Pa.Then came the storm, the lightning struck, I called upon Saint Anne,I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augustinian! Oh...Chorus:Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiationSpeak your mind against them and face excommunication!Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St. Peter's profits soared,I wrote a little notice for the All Saints' Bull'tin board:"You cannot purchase merits, for we're justified by grace!Here's 95 more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!" Oh...Chorus:They loved my tracts, adored my wit, all were exempleror;The Pope, however, hauled me up before the Emperor."Are these your books? Do you recant?" King Charles did demand,"I will not change my Diet, Sir, God help me here I stand!" Oh...Chorus:Duke Frederick took the Wise approach, responding to my words,By knighting "George" as hostage in the Kingdom of the Birds.Use Brother Martin's model if the languages you seek,Stay locked inside a castle with your Hebrew and your Greek! Oh...Chorus:Let's raise our steins and Concord Books while gathered in this place,And spread the word that 'catholic' is spelled with lower case;The Word remains unfettered when the Spirit gets his chance,So come on, Katy, drop your lute, and join us in our dance! Oh...Chorus:
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Bottom of the Barrel – This from Peggy Neufeld.A young boy had just received his driver's permit and asked his father if they could discuss his use of the car. His father said he would make a deal with his son. "You bring your grades up from a C to a B average, study your Bible a little, get your hair cut and we'll talk about the car." The boy thought about that for a moment, decided he'd settle for the offer and they agreed on it. After about six weeks his father said, "Son, I've been real proud. You brought your grades up and I've observed that you have been studying your Bible, but I'm real disappointed you didn't get your hair cut." The young man paused a moment then said, "You know, Dad, I've been thinking about that, and I've noticed in my studies of the Bible that Samson had long hair, John the Baptist had long hair, Moses had long hair. And there's even a strong argument that Jesus had long hair." His father thought for a moment. "Did you also notice that they all walked everywhere they went?"
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Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Reader 1: This is a weird kind of story – this book of Job. And it just doesn’t seem right – the story starts out with God and Satan making bets on what Job is going to do.
Reader 2: Well, the first thing to realize is that the story of Job goes way, way, way, way, way way back in time.
1: What you’re trying to say is that it goes a long way back.
2: Yeah. Way, way, way..
1: (interrupting) OK. I’ve got it.
2: It’s based on a very ancient legend, in which God is talking to various angels, of whom the satan is just one. This satan not the bad guy in red underwear. And so God, in this story, isn’t necessarily all good, and the satan isn’t all bad.
1: So in today’s reading we get to the happy ending. Everybody is happy and they live happily ever after. I think we need to tell the story first so today’s reading makes some sense.
2: Well, the ending isn’t quite that simple. But you’re right. We need to tell the story. You start.
1: Once upon a time – that seems like a good way to start because it is a kind of a legend – a fairy tale – once upon a time God was walking around in heaven talking to the various angels. God spoke to one of the angels called the satan.
2: Where have you been? We’ve missed you around here.
1: Oh, I’ve been walking around on the earth looking at stuff.
2: Did you notice Job. He’s a really good man. He’s really loyal to me.
1: Well, yeah, sure he is. You’ve made it easy for him. You’ve given him everything, wealth, health, children – you name it, Job’s got it. So of course he’s loyal to you.
2: You’ve got that wrong, satan. All wrong. Job is loyal to me because he’s devoted to me.
1: You’ve got that wrong, God, all wrong. Job is loyal to you because of all the stuff you’ve given him.
2: So go and test him. Take all the that wealth and family away from him. Do anything you want, but you can’t kill him. You can take anything but not his life.
1: So one by one, the satan hits on Job. He takes away his herds of cattle. He takes away his family. He takes away his health. Job is reduced to a miserable blob of humanity sitting on an ash heap, covered with boils. Job’s wife confronts him.
2: C’mon Job. Get it over with. Curse God and die.
1: No. God has been good to me. I am loyal to my God. There must be a reason for all this, but whatever it is, I am loyal to my God.
2: Then three of Job’s friends come to see him. “Job,” they say. “Job, you must have done something really awful to deserve all this.”
1: No. That’s not true. I haven’t done anything. I have been faithful to my God. I have obeyed all the rules and done everything right.
2: Give it up, Job. All this awful stuff doesn’t come just out of nowhere. You must have slapped God in the face somehow. These things don’t just happen out of nothing.
1: No! No! I have done nothing wrong. I am faithful to God. I just need a chance to talk to God face to face. Like in a court of law. I want God to talk to me, man to man. Tell me what I have done and whether I deserve this.
2: The argument goes on for days and gets nowhere. Then another of Job’s friends comes along and tells his three friends to get lost. And for awhile, it looks as if there might be some decent discussion. But he says basically the same things as the other guys. He tries to back Job into a corner. “C’mon. ‘Fes up, Job. What did you do? You must have done something pretty ugly to deserve all this!”
1: I don’t deserve all this. I’ve done nothing wrong. All I want is to talk to God face to face. Let God tell me what I’ve done to deserve all this. I demand my day in court. I want my rights. I deserve the chance to meet with God and talk this through.
2: Well, God comes onto the scene alright. But God doesn’t sit down and talk it through with Job. God throws the universe at poor Job.
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, 'Here we are'?
And then poor Job, sitting on his ash heap and covered with sores, answers God. And this is our scripture reading for this morning. From the book of Job.
(SLIGHT PAUSE)
Then Job answered the LORD:
1: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
'Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.' I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
2: And God restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and God gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that God had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.
1: God blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters.
2: Job named the first daughter Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch.
1: In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.
2: After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations.
1: And Job died, old and full of days.
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A somewhat irreverent paraphrase of the Job narrative
by Jim Taylor
This play takes about 15 minutes to read out loud or to act out.
Announcer: Warning. The following program may contain coarse language and scenes of graphic depiction that may offend small children and old ladies. Viewer caution is advised.
Narrator: God and Satan are having tea together.
Satan: Mmmmm... Nice blend.
God: Thank you. It’s prepared specially for me. It’s grown only in the highest tea plantations above Darjeeling, in the Himalayas, and they only pick the newest leaves from virgin bushes.
Satan: You do live quite well, don’t you?
God: Well, I am everything, after all.
Satan: That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I think some of your followers are deluded.
God: In what way?
Satan: Well, they believe that because you are perfect, they should also be perfect. And because you have everything, they should have everything too.
God: That’s a ridiculous argument.
Satan: But you play into it, don’t you? Can you deny that you favour your believers with prosperity and long life?
God: I do not. If they believe in me, they tend to lead healthier lives. That’s the reason for their prosperity and longevity.
Satan: Will all due respect, I think your followers believe in you only because they’re convinced you reward them.
God: That’s not true. They would be faithful even if things went badly.
Satan: Prove it!
God: All right. There’s Job, who’s never done anything wrong in his life. He would believe in me no matter what happened to him.
Satan: I’d like to test that theory.
God: Go ahead. Torment him any way you want – you can’t make him crack.
Scene 1
Shift to Job, reclining in a La-Z-boy chair, sipping champagne, while a gorgeous maid drops grapes into his open mouth.
Narrator: Job is a wealthy man. He has a big family, flocks of sheep and cattle, and investments in all the big banks. But he is unaware that disaster is about to fall upon him. A servant comes rushing in.
Servant rushes in,
Servant: Sir! Sir! Disaster has fallen upon you! You are ruined!
Job waves a hand languidly at the servant.
Job: Stop! That’s no way to deliver bad news. You must learn how to break bad news gently, progressively, so as to lead your hearer gradually to a realization of what has happened.
Servant: But, but...
Job: No buts, my friend. Now, you pretend you’re me, and I’m you, bringing bad news. So I would start this way – Sir, I regret to inform you that your goldfish has died.
Servant: (struggling to comprehend) My goldfish?
Job: Yes. Unfortunately, it expired when a roof beam of your house fell upon its aquarium.
Servant: My house?
Job: It was the fire. The local volunteer fire brigade were unable to control it before it spread out of the garage.
Servant: The garage?
Job: (enjoying his imaginative narrative greatly. The maid continues to drop grapes into his mouth.) Indeed. The gas tank on the Ferrari exploded in the heat generated by the flaming barn next door.
Servant: The barn?
Job: Your sheep were out in the field when they were struck by lightning. Their coats were still smouldering when they stampeded into the barn and set it alight. (pauses for thought) Now, what else can I add?
Servant: Your family?
Job: Of course! All your sons and daughters were working in the loft, storing grain in bins, when the old timbers of the barn ignited. Unfortunately, they were all incinerated. But that’s actually good news, because it will save you the costs of cremation. (finishing off with a flourish) Which is just as well, because your banks are all bankrupt, and the government has just nationalized them, so your shares are worthless! (leans back satisfied with himself) There – see how easy it is when you lead into these things gently? (pause, while he recollects the purpose of this exercise) Now, then, what was it you wanted to tell me?
Servant: (wringing his hands and squirming) Sir, it’s about your goldfish...
The maid stops dropping grapes into Job’s mouth, and walks away. Job squats on a stool, scrunched up in despair.
Scene 2
Narrator: Job’s creditors demand repayment.
Creditors surround Job. They strip off his jacket, tie, sweater, shoes, socks (or whatever he’s wearing)
Narrator: They even take the shirt off his back.
One of the creditors rips Job’s shirt off.
Narrator: But despite Job’s misfortunes, he remains philosophical.
Job: (huddled on the stool) Naked I came, naked I will return. God gives, God takes away. That’s good enough for me.
Job’s wife: Oh, you typical man! Quit milking your misery for sympathy!
Job: I am not milking it. I’m being brave!
Job’s wife: You’re being punished. Go ahead! Curse God and get it over with!
Job: Oh, you typical woman! Take a larger view! Can we expect only to receive good things from God, and not an occasional negative? April showers bring May flowers.
Job’s wife: Enough of your damned platitudes. What about me? Those were my children too, you know.
Job: You shouldn’t take these things personally.
Scene 3
Narrator: Job has gone to squat in the local landfill, because that’s what he feels like.
Job: I am so miserable that I wish I hadn’t been born. If only my mother had miscarried, or my father had smashed my head against a rock. If this is what life comes to, why was it worth feeding me, training me, teaching me? And you know what’s worse? The universe doesn’t give a damn! The sun comes up; the sun goes down; the world rolls on as if I don’t matter at all. I’m not only miserable, I’m nothing!
Three friends enter
Narrator: Three of Job’s friends come to console him, but when they see what he’s come to, they are themselves in shock. For seven days, they don’t know what to say. Then they start to find words.
Bildad: Enough of this sitting around.
Eliphaz: Yes. I’ve got things to do.
Zophar: Promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
Bildad: Let’s get on with this. Who wants to go first?
Eliphaz: Buck up, man. People look up to you. Don’t let them down. If they see you doubting the goodness of God, they may do the same. You know God is responsible for everything. So God must be doing this to you for a reason.
Job: I’ve done nothing wrong.
Bildad: You must have done something wrong. This cannot be unjust punishment, because that would make God unjust, and that’s impossible. So repent for whatever you’ve done, even if you don’t know you’ve done it.
Job: To repent for something I didn’t do would be a lie. I cannot lie to God. But this is an unequal contest; I can no more argue with God than a kindergarten child can argue with a lawyer. This is so awful, I’d take up drinking, if I could afford to drink.
Zophar: The fact that you’re being punished proves that you must have done something wrong. Repent and all will be well again. God will forgive you for your pride.
Job: Don’t treat me like an idiot with your meaningless dogmas! It’s all very well for you – you still have your families, your government pension plans. (To God) Quit picking on me – either leave me alone or let me get well again!
Eliphaz: If you hadn’t done wrong before, you certainly have now. Your words are blasphemy. They threaten the very fundamentals of our faith.
Job: Hey, buster, reverse the situation! If you were in my shoes, how would you feel? (To God) I wish I could die.
Bildad: You can’t blame anyone but yourself for this. We all know that the wicked cause their own downfall by their actions.
Job: What utter bullshit! You’re blaming the victim instead of the oppressor. For some reason, God has turned against me. Even my breath is so rotten now that my wife won’t let me come near her.
Zophar: I can’t restrain myself any more. You’re talking nonsense! We know that wickedness always gets its comeuppance in the end!
Job: Don’t talk to me about nonsense! You know very well it doesn’t work that way in real life. Open your eyes, you pompous ideolog!
Eliphaz: I take back all those good things I said about you originally. I see now that you are a wicked, rebellious man.
Job: I have not done anything wrong. I have not rebelled against God. Life itself is unjust, unfair. Show me that it is not so.
Bildad: When you call yourself righteous, you lie in your teeth, you self-deluded fool.
Job: Who’s self-deluded? You are! You actually think your puny mind can understand the whole of God, as if God were a puppet and you held all the strings. You’re wrong. I believe that God is truth; therefore I will speak the truth whatever the consequences. I will not pretend. I will not lie to appease either you, or God. (Appalled, the three friends back away.) Once I was happy, once I was admired and respected, but now I am an object of derision. (To the friends) If you can name one thing I have done wrong, I will admit it and repent. But be specific. I’m sick of your abstract moralizing.
Scene 4
Narrator: A young man has been eavesdropping on this debate.
Elihu: Sorry to butt in, guys, but the rest of you are obviously clueless, so I want to bring some perspective into this business. (To Job) Hey, man, where do you get off thinking you can talk back to God? God is way greater than you are. If God chooses to punish you for something, who are you to object? (To the three friends) You guys keep missing the point. The problem is not whether God is just or not, but your presumptions about what constitutes justice. Clearly, God is afflicting Job for some reason. But it’s not working yet. Job hasn’t suffered enough yet to see the light, so he is adding rebellion to whatever the original cause was. Maybe when he has suffered a lot more, he’ll smarten up. You know that in everything God works for good, so it follows that God changes the afflicted by giving them their affliction. You three are so preoccupied with your notions of justice than you’re forgetting about God. Praise God’s greatness, and quit sweating the small stuff.
Scene 4
Fed up with all the arguments, God takes the stand personally.
God: What kind of arrogant worm are you, questioning my impartiality? Where were you, when I created the universe, when I established the four forces that hold everything together, when I put the sun and the stars into their orbits and established conditions that enabled life to flourish? Have you devised the Grand Unified Theory of Everything yet? Then quit finding fault with me!
Job: I have shot off my mouth. I will keep it zipped from here on.
God: No you won’t, because I gave you humans responsibilities. It’s not good enough for you to hunker down and act fatalistic. You must act on my behalf. You must create the justice you keep longing for. But don’t overestimate your abilities, and don’t start thinking that you are God.
Job: I spoke out of turn. I’m sorry.
Conclusion
Narrator: For being satisfied with fine words instead of actions, the three friends have to give away some of their own wealth to get Job started on the long process of recovery. Then and only then do his brothers and sisters come to share some of their own possessions with him. Eventually Job’s wealth and status is restored.
He has three daughters and seven sons. But he has obviously been changed by his encounter with God, because the story records the names of the daughters, but not of the sons. And it notes that in a radical departure from the customs of his time, he shared his estate equally with the daughters, as well as the sons.
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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 at shaw.ca. (Change the “at” to the “at” sign – you know the “a” with the circle around it. I’m trying to slow down the spammers.) Then 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 at shaw.ca.
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
2009-10-18
October 18, 2009
THE IMPATIENCE OF JOB
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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. And if you need back issues, that’s where to find ‘em.
Thanks.
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The Story – why do bad things happen?
Rumors – blind folks who see
Soft Edges – the gentle giant
Bloopers – a minion or a minyan?
We Get Letters – what to tell a nine-year-old
Mirabile Dictu! – supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Bottom of the Barrel – they walked where they went
Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Extra Resource – Jim’s irreverent paraphrase of the Job story
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 Spinks.
In Sunday school little Kathy was drawing a Nativity picture. There were Mary and Joseph, shepherds and wise men. "What's that in the corner Kathy?" asked the teacher. "That's their TV, of course," replied Kathy.
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, October 25th, which is Proper 25 [30].
* Job 42:1-6, 10-17 or Jeremiah 31:7-9
* Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22) or Psalm 126
* Hebrews 7:23-28
* Mark 10:46-52
The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – Job 42:1-6, 10-17.
This is a somewhat longer issue of Rumors because it offers more resources on the Job story. The Reader’s Theatre offers a short summary of the story which could be used even if you don’t do the Reader’s Theatre thing. And following that is a short paraphrase of the Job story by Jim Taylor – short but still 15 minutes long if you were to use all of it.
Jim says –
We’ve been avoiding the Job story for the last four weeks, because the friends’ speeches about sin make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad look concise. But the story deserves to be told. How? Tell it – don’t read it!
How Job ended up in his miserable predicament (Chapters 1 and 2) is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether God and Satan played dice with Job’s fate, or whether he just happened to be around when the Wall Street of his time had an economic collapse.
Forget the cause – the important thing in Job is the falsity of the conventional conceptions offered as explanations:
1. God must be doing this for a good reason.
2. This can’t be unjust punishment, because that would make God unjust.
3. Punishment proves you must have done something wrong.
Now, aren’t those same ideas still being voiced? People who go through a mental breakdown, who get cancer or MS, are still looked at with suspicion – they must have done something to deserve this... You lost your pension; your investments crashed? You must have done something stupid... Your marriage failed? Which of you was playing around?
The end of the story was probably tacked on to provide a Hollywood ending. But it does make a point: as a result of his experiences, Job violated the cultural norms of his day. The Bible records the names of his daughters but not, interestingly, of his sons. And the daughters shared equally in his inheritance – an exceptional occurrence for those times.
Ralph says –
The reason it is important to hear the story of Job is because it helps us articulate a fundamentally human question. Why is it that “bad things happen to good people,” as Rabbi Harold Kushner asks so well in his little book?
The Book of Job doesn’t answer the question, but it does help us come to grips with it. We can all think of real scum bags who do very well and become very wealthy. And we all know genuinely good people who have never had two nickels to rub together. We think of ourselves when bad things happen and wonder what we have done to deserve this. And we know that the saying, “God never gives us more than we can handle,” is nonsense. We know people who have been totally destroyed by what has happened to them.
On the recent best-seller lists is a book called, “The Shack,” by Wm. Paul Young who approaches the question from another angle. Like my friend Julian of Norwich, he offers what seems like a simplistic response but which is deeply profound. The book has become a best seller, not because it is so well designed and written (it isn’t) but because it does a good job of helping us understand human suffering and God’s response.
God is love. God has created a world in which pain and sorrow and death are constant realities. And into that world God comes with love. The power and the weakness of love.
The story of Job flatly contradicts the idea that if you are totally faithful to God nothing bad will happen to you. Everything bad happens to Job and he is totally faithful.
I read what I have just written and I realize how grossly inadequate and facile it is. I hope you can do better.
Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22) – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 I will speak only good of my God;
I will not let a critical thought off my tongue.
2 For God has been good to me.
That is the good news I want you to know.
4 Yes, I have suffered like you.
I have known grief, and loss, and pain;
I have wondered where my next meal would come from,
and I have asked myself if anyone cared.
6 But through it all, God has been good to me.
God cared.
3 As we have shared in these experiences,
so let us share in giving the glory to God.
5 Put your hand in the hand of God,
and walk forward with confidence;
Turn your face towards God, and see clearly.
7 For though God will not, with a snap of the fingers,
turn all your troubles around,
God will, miraculously, put them into perspective;
God will make your mountains into molehills,
and your elephants into ants.
8 Trust, and see.
God makes a difference.
God is good.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Publications.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
Hebrews 7:23-28 – It shows a gap in my understanding, that I can’t quite see the need for the exalting of Jesus as High Priest. That may be because I’ve been raised and nurtured in a very low-church background. But I’ve had the privilege of friendship with Roman Catholics and Anglo Catholics for whom the concept is deeply and profoundly significant and so I’m not prepared to write off this passage just because I don’t understand it.
Mark 10:46-52 – Does the story of blind Bartimaeus add anything to our understanding of the “why” about pain and suffering and horror? Perhaps Jesus’ immediate and total response might be a clue. It sent me to look up a quote from W.A. Tozer which Young offers in “The Shack.”
“An infinite God can give all of Himself [sic] to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.”
For children see “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year B.” It offers the story of Blind Bartimaeus on page 218. The story of Job, in a version that might be useful to both children and adults, is also found in Year B, on page 205.
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
Or, if you live in Canada or the US, simply pick up the phone and dial 1 800 663 2775.
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Rumors – When the lector reads the Blind Bartimaeus passage on Sunday, the congregation probably will not burst out laughing at the humor of it. But something smells funny about this story, so a bit of good-natured poking around might be fun.
Blind beggars were not exactly at the top of the social ladder in Jesus’ day. Bartimaeus was not on the “must invite” list of the social climbers in Jericho.
But just a minute. Peter names Jesus as the Messiah at Caesarea Philippi, and a few evil spirits know about his Messiahship, but this blind beggar is the first one to publically name Jesus as “Son of David,” which is what any aspiring Messiah would be known as.
And for this, Bartimaeus is told to shut his face. But as Alfred Doolittle told Professor Higgins, it is only middle class folks who can afford morality and manners. Bartimaeus has neither. All he has is his need, so keeps on yelling. And yelling.
So Jesus takes a deep breath and goes over to him. “OK, relax buddy. What do you want?”
“I want to see!”
Just a minute now. Let’s get this straight. The only one of the public who has the wit and wisdom to see that Jesus is the Messiah, says to this same Messiah, “I want to see.”
Where did he get this? Bartimaeus had not gone to the Synagogue library to check all the cross references in the holy books to see if Jesus was the Messiah. Blind beggars don’t often spend much time in expensive libraries.
Nor would Bartimaeus have high level discussions with the Scribes and Pharisees in the Temple courts. He wasn’t invited to their Bible study group.
How did he know? Well, he didn’t “know.” He took a flying leap, or he was trying to flatter Jesus or he had the gift of clairvoyance or he had an insight or God spoke to him. Take your pick.
One way or another he had the “sight” to see what nobody else could see. Once again God chuckles and reveals the holy through babes and beggars and bastards and buffoons.
And those of us who read a lot of books and even occasionally write a few just have to stand back, scratch our heads bald and notice that the folks we’ve just told to shut up; the ones we’ve out-argued or out-voted at church meetings, or the ones we’ve managed to ignore on the street corner, these are the “blind” folks who somehow see.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
The Gentle Giant
Wotan lives down the road from us. Wotan is a horse. At 20 years old, he still stands 18 hands tall. That puts him in some exclusive company. The Guinness Book of World Records lists the world’s tallest horse at just over 20 hands high (a “hand” measures four inches). But that horse died a year ago. The current claimant for the title is an Ontario Clydesdale named Poe, at 20.2 hands tall.
Regardless, Wotan is a very big horse. I stand 5’8” tall, and I have to look up at Wotan’s back.
The name Wotan is a variant spelling for Wodin, or Odin, the Norse god often depicted riding a huge eight-legged horse into battle.
Despite his size, this Wotan is amazingly gentle. He canters up to the fence when I come by, offering his head and neck for a quick rub. He could, if he wished, effortlessly kick the slats out of his fence, but he doesn’t.
For most of my life, I admit, I’ve been a little afraid of horses.
Once, when I was about eight, I saw a horse kick a man. I don’t know if the horse had a bad temper, or if the man had mistreated his mount. But as the man passed behind the horse on a mountain trail, the horse coiled up both hind legs and struck out. Its hooves caught the man squarely in the chest and catapulted him right off the trail and down the slope below.
He must have had several broken ribs. Perhaps more. I didn’t stay to watch. I ran from the scene as fast as an eight-year-old’s legs could carry me.
Later in life, I took a group of Scouts to visit the police stables at Sunnybrook Park in Toronto. I mentioned that incident to the sergeant guiding us around, as an explanation for my fears.
“They’re just so powerful,” I said.
He looked surprised. “They are,” he agreed, as the horse behind him snuffled his ear. “Fortunately, they don’t know it.”
Most of our images of power and strength come from two sources – monarchy and military.
So we think, perhaps, of Henry VIII, executing wives for failing to produce a male heir to the throne. Or of Emperor Nero, burning tarred Christians as torches for his garden parties.
Lewis Carroll satirized this kind of power, in Alice in Wonderland. The Queen of Hearts commanded “Off with his head!” at the slightest provocation.
Or else we think of military might – of tanks and bombs and massed legions crushing opposition the way a bulldozer crushes a buttercup.
It’s the power to coerce.
Such images lead us to think that power must be used to be useful. What’s the point of having a 400-horsepower car, if you never use all that power? What value is an army, if it grows fat and lazy in its barracks?
Wotan the horse reminds me that it is possible to have power without needing to use it, that it is possible to have power and still be gentle.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Shirley Hollett, who says she is from “the big land,” i.e. the Labrador, caught this, unfortunately, “before the bulletin got printed. Hymn: “Now Thank we Al Our God.”
You should have left it in, Shirley, because we’ve got a lot to thank our “A-one” God for.
Mark Perry of Oil City thought the announcement about his appointment in the local newspaper should have been “Interning Minister.” Instead it read, “Interring Minister.” Says Mark, “I guess they thought we were dying off fast and furious.”
Fred Roden points up a blooper in last week’s Rumors. I referred to the number or people required for a Hebrew service as a “minion,” when it should have been “minyan.”
A “minion” is some poorly salaried, overworked sad-sack, i.e. most Protestant clergy.
Wayne Seybert of Longmont, Colorado found these bloopers.
* For the group of ladies called “Moms Who Care” and pray for the children in school. When their meeting was cancelled one week: “There will be no Moms who care this week.”* A worm welcome to all who have come today.* Hymn: "I Love Thee My Ford."
Kendell Nordstrom of Beloit, Wisconsin has a new title. He was listed in the bulletin as "Bible stud leader." Says Kendall, “I think it has a nice ring to it.”
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 at shaw.ca (change the “at to the symbol and remove the spaces.)
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Wish I’d Said That! – The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell via Jim Taylor
If to err is human, I have daily proof of my humanity.
Jayne Whyte
Computers are useless; they can only give you answers.
Pablo Picasso via Kendell Nordstrom
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We Get Letters – Mary Lautensleger of Charlotte, North Carolina has a nine-year-old granddaughter who wants to know what a “reptile dysfunction" is? “What should I tell her?”
Mary, my grandkids are teenagers. I think they already know.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”) Courtesy of Fran Ota and Wilma Huston White.
Sung to the tune of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"When I was just ein junger Mann I studied canon law;While Erfurt was a challenge, it was just to please my Pa.Then came the storm, the lightning struck, I called upon Saint Anne,I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augustinian! Oh...Chorus:Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiationSpeak your mind against them and face excommunication!Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St. Peter's profits soared,I wrote a little notice for the All Saints' Bull'tin board:"You cannot purchase merits, for we're justified by grace!Here's 95 more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!" Oh...Chorus:They loved my tracts, adored my wit, all were exempleror;The Pope, however, hauled me up before the Emperor."Are these your books? Do you recant?" King Charles did demand,"I will not change my Diet, Sir, God help me here I stand!" Oh...Chorus:Duke Frederick took the Wise approach, responding to my words,By knighting "George" as hostage in the Kingdom of the Birds.Use Brother Martin's model if the languages you seek,Stay locked inside a castle with your Hebrew and your Greek! Oh...Chorus:Let's raise our steins and Concord Books while gathered in this place,And spread the word that 'catholic' is spelled with lower case;The Word remains unfettered when the Spirit gets his chance,So come on, Katy, drop your lute, and join us in our dance! Oh...Chorus:
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Bottom of the Barrel – This from Peggy Neufeld.A young boy had just received his driver's permit and asked his father if they could discuss his use of the car. His father said he would make a deal with his son. "You bring your grades up from a C to a B average, study your Bible a little, get your hair cut and we'll talk about the car." The boy thought about that for a moment, decided he'd settle for the offer and they agreed on it. After about six weeks his father said, "Son, I've been real proud. You brought your grades up and I've observed that you have been studying your Bible, but I'm real disappointed you didn't get your hair cut." The young man paused a moment then said, "You know, Dad, I've been thinking about that, and I've noticed in my studies of the Bible that Samson had long hair, John the Baptist had long hair, Moses had long hair. And there's even a strong argument that Jesus had long hair." His father thought for a moment. "Did you also notice that they all walked everywhere they went?"
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Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Reader 1: This is a weird kind of story – this book of Job. And it just doesn’t seem right – the story starts out with God and Satan making bets on what Job is going to do.
Reader 2: Well, the first thing to realize is that the story of Job goes way, way, way, way, way way back in time.
1: What you’re trying to say is that it goes a long way back.
2: Yeah. Way, way, way..
1: (interrupting) OK. I’ve got it.
2: It’s based on a very ancient legend, in which God is talking to various angels, of whom the satan is just one. This satan not the bad guy in red underwear. And so God, in this story, isn’t necessarily all good, and the satan isn’t all bad.
1: So in today’s reading we get to the happy ending. Everybody is happy and they live happily ever after. I think we need to tell the story first so today’s reading makes some sense.
2: Well, the ending isn’t quite that simple. But you’re right. We need to tell the story. You start.
1: Once upon a time – that seems like a good way to start because it is a kind of a legend – a fairy tale – once upon a time God was walking around in heaven talking to the various angels. God spoke to one of the angels called the satan.
2: Where have you been? We’ve missed you around here.
1: Oh, I’ve been walking around on the earth looking at stuff.
2: Did you notice Job. He’s a really good man. He’s really loyal to me.
1: Well, yeah, sure he is. You’ve made it easy for him. You’ve given him everything, wealth, health, children – you name it, Job’s got it. So of course he’s loyal to you.
2: You’ve got that wrong, satan. All wrong. Job is loyal to me because he’s devoted to me.
1: You’ve got that wrong, God, all wrong. Job is loyal to you because of all the stuff you’ve given him.
2: So go and test him. Take all the that wealth and family away from him. Do anything you want, but you can’t kill him. You can take anything but not his life.
1: So one by one, the satan hits on Job. He takes away his herds of cattle. He takes away his family. He takes away his health. Job is reduced to a miserable blob of humanity sitting on an ash heap, covered with boils. Job’s wife confronts him.
2: C’mon Job. Get it over with. Curse God and die.
1: No. God has been good to me. I am loyal to my God. There must be a reason for all this, but whatever it is, I am loyal to my God.
2: Then three of Job’s friends come to see him. “Job,” they say. “Job, you must have done something really awful to deserve all this.”
1: No. That’s not true. I haven’t done anything. I have been faithful to my God. I have obeyed all the rules and done everything right.
2: Give it up, Job. All this awful stuff doesn’t come just out of nowhere. You must have slapped God in the face somehow. These things don’t just happen out of nothing.
1: No! No! I have done nothing wrong. I am faithful to God. I just need a chance to talk to God face to face. Like in a court of law. I want God to talk to me, man to man. Tell me what I have done and whether I deserve this.
2: The argument goes on for days and gets nowhere. Then another of Job’s friends comes along and tells his three friends to get lost. And for awhile, it looks as if there might be some decent discussion. But he says basically the same things as the other guys. He tries to back Job into a corner. “C’mon. ‘Fes up, Job. What did you do? You must have done something pretty ugly to deserve all this!”
1: I don’t deserve all this. I’ve done nothing wrong. All I want is to talk to God face to face. Let God tell me what I’ve done to deserve all this. I demand my day in court. I want my rights. I deserve the chance to meet with God and talk this through.
2: Well, God comes onto the scene alright. But God doesn’t sit down and talk it through with Job. God throws the universe at poor Job.
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, 'Here we are'?
And then poor Job, sitting on his ash heap and covered with sores, answers God. And this is our scripture reading for this morning. From the book of Job.
(SLIGHT PAUSE)
Then Job answered the LORD:
1: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
'Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.' I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
2: And God restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and God gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that God had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.
1: God blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters.
2: Job named the first daughter Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch.
1: In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.
2: After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations.
1: And Job died, old and full of days.
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A somewhat irreverent paraphrase of the Job narrative
by Jim Taylor
This play takes about 15 minutes to read out loud or to act out.
Announcer: Warning. The following program may contain coarse language and scenes of graphic depiction that may offend small children and old ladies. Viewer caution is advised.
Narrator: God and Satan are having tea together.
Satan: Mmmmm... Nice blend.
God: Thank you. It’s prepared specially for me. It’s grown only in the highest tea plantations above Darjeeling, in the Himalayas, and they only pick the newest leaves from virgin bushes.
Satan: You do live quite well, don’t you?
God: Well, I am everything, after all.
Satan: That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I think some of your followers are deluded.
God: In what way?
Satan: Well, they believe that because you are perfect, they should also be perfect. And because you have everything, they should have everything too.
God: That’s a ridiculous argument.
Satan: But you play into it, don’t you? Can you deny that you favour your believers with prosperity and long life?
God: I do not. If they believe in me, they tend to lead healthier lives. That’s the reason for their prosperity and longevity.
Satan: Will all due respect, I think your followers believe in you only because they’re convinced you reward them.
God: That’s not true. They would be faithful even if things went badly.
Satan: Prove it!
God: All right. There’s Job, who’s never done anything wrong in his life. He would believe in me no matter what happened to him.
Satan: I’d like to test that theory.
God: Go ahead. Torment him any way you want – you can’t make him crack.
Scene 1
Shift to Job, reclining in a La-Z-boy chair, sipping champagne, while a gorgeous maid drops grapes into his open mouth.
Narrator: Job is a wealthy man. He has a big family, flocks of sheep and cattle, and investments in all the big banks. But he is unaware that disaster is about to fall upon him. A servant comes rushing in.
Servant rushes in,
Servant: Sir! Sir! Disaster has fallen upon you! You are ruined!
Job waves a hand languidly at the servant.
Job: Stop! That’s no way to deliver bad news. You must learn how to break bad news gently, progressively, so as to lead your hearer gradually to a realization of what has happened.
Servant: But, but...
Job: No buts, my friend. Now, you pretend you’re me, and I’m you, bringing bad news. So I would start this way – Sir, I regret to inform you that your goldfish has died.
Servant: (struggling to comprehend) My goldfish?
Job: Yes. Unfortunately, it expired when a roof beam of your house fell upon its aquarium.
Servant: My house?
Job: It was the fire. The local volunteer fire brigade were unable to control it before it spread out of the garage.
Servant: The garage?
Job: (enjoying his imaginative narrative greatly. The maid continues to drop grapes into his mouth.) Indeed. The gas tank on the Ferrari exploded in the heat generated by the flaming barn next door.
Servant: The barn?
Job: Your sheep were out in the field when they were struck by lightning. Their coats were still smouldering when they stampeded into the barn and set it alight. (pauses for thought) Now, what else can I add?
Servant: Your family?
Job: Of course! All your sons and daughters were working in the loft, storing grain in bins, when the old timbers of the barn ignited. Unfortunately, they were all incinerated. But that’s actually good news, because it will save you the costs of cremation. (finishing off with a flourish) Which is just as well, because your banks are all bankrupt, and the government has just nationalized them, so your shares are worthless! (leans back satisfied with himself) There – see how easy it is when you lead into these things gently? (pause, while he recollects the purpose of this exercise) Now, then, what was it you wanted to tell me?
Servant: (wringing his hands and squirming) Sir, it’s about your goldfish...
The maid stops dropping grapes into Job’s mouth, and walks away. Job squats on a stool, scrunched up in despair.
Scene 2
Narrator: Job’s creditors demand repayment.
Creditors surround Job. They strip off his jacket, tie, sweater, shoes, socks (or whatever he’s wearing)
Narrator: They even take the shirt off his back.
One of the creditors rips Job’s shirt off.
Narrator: But despite Job’s misfortunes, he remains philosophical.
Job: (huddled on the stool) Naked I came, naked I will return. God gives, God takes away. That’s good enough for me.
Job’s wife: Oh, you typical man! Quit milking your misery for sympathy!
Job: I am not milking it. I’m being brave!
Job’s wife: You’re being punished. Go ahead! Curse God and get it over with!
Job: Oh, you typical woman! Take a larger view! Can we expect only to receive good things from God, and not an occasional negative? April showers bring May flowers.
Job’s wife: Enough of your damned platitudes. What about me? Those were my children too, you know.
Job: You shouldn’t take these things personally.
Scene 3
Narrator: Job has gone to squat in the local landfill, because that’s what he feels like.
Job: I am so miserable that I wish I hadn’t been born. If only my mother had miscarried, or my father had smashed my head against a rock. If this is what life comes to, why was it worth feeding me, training me, teaching me? And you know what’s worse? The universe doesn’t give a damn! The sun comes up; the sun goes down; the world rolls on as if I don’t matter at all. I’m not only miserable, I’m nothing!
Three friends enter
Narrator: Three of Job’s friends come to console him, but when they see what he’s come to, they are themselves in shock. For seven days, they don’t know what to say. Then they start to find words.
Bildad: Enough of this sitting around.
Eliphaz: Yes. I’ve got things to do.
Zophar: Promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
Bildad: Let’s get on with this. Who wants to go first?
Eliphaz: Buck up, man. People look up to you. Don’t let them down. If they see you doubting the goodness of God, they may do the same. You know God is responsible for everything. So God must be doing this to you for a reason.
Job: I’ve done nothing wrong.
Bildad: You must have done something wrong. This cannot be unjust punishment, because that would make God unjust, and that’s impossible. So repent for whatever you’ve done, even if you don’t know you’ve done it.
Job: To repent for something I didn’t do would be a lie. I cannot lie to God. But this is an unequal contest; I can no more argue with God than a kindergarten child can argue with a lawyer. This is so awful, I’d take up drinking, if I could afford to drink.
Zophar: The fact that you’re being punished proves that you must have done something wrong. Repent and all will be well again. God will forgive you for your pride.
Job: Don’t treat me like an idiot with your meaningless dogmas! It’s all very well for you – you still have your families, your government pension plans. (To God) Quit picking on me – either leave me alone or let me get well again!
Eliphaz: If you hadn’t done wrong before, you certainly have now. Your words are blasphemy. They threaten the very fundamentals of our faith.
Job: Hey, buster, reverse the situation! If you were in my shoes, how would you feel? (To God) I wish I could die.
Bildad: You can’t blame anyone but yourself for this. We all know that the wicked cause their own downfall by their actions.
Job: What utter bullshit! You’re blaming the victim instead of the oppressor. For some reason, God has turned against me. Even my breath is so rotten now that my wife won’t let me come near her.
Zophar: I can’t restrain myself any more. You’re talking nonsense! We know that wickedness always gets its comeuppance in the end!
Job: Don’t talk to me about nonsense! You know very well it doesn’t work that way in real life. Open your eyes, you pompous ideolog!
Eliphaz: I take back all those good things I said about you originally. I see now that you are a wicked, rebellious man.
Job: I have not done anything wrong. I have not rebelled against God. Life itself is unjust, unfair. Show me that it is not so.
Bildad: When you call yourself righteous, you lie in your teeth, you self-deluded fool.
Job: Who’s self-deluded? You are! You actually think your puny mind can understand the whole of God, as if God were a puppet and you held all the strings. You’re wrong. I believe that God is truth; therefore I will speak the truth whatever the consequences. I will not pretend. I will not lie to appease either you, or God. (Appalled, the three friends back away.) Once I was happy, once I was admired and respected, but now I am an object of derision. (To the friends) If you can name one thing I have done wrong, I will admit it and repent. But be specific. I’m sick of your abstract moralizing.
Scene 4
Narrator: A young man has been eavesdropping on this debate.
Elihu: Sorry to butt in, guys, but the rest of you are obviously clueless, so I want to bring some perspective into this business. (To Job) Hey, man, where do you get off thinking you can talk back to God? God is way greater than you are. If God chooses to punish you for something, who are you to object? (To the three friends) You guys keep missing the point. The problem is not whether God is just or not, but your presumptions about what constitutes justice. Clearly, God is afflicting Job for some reason. But it’s not working yet. Job hasn’t suffered enough yet to see the light, so he is adding rebellion to whatever the original cause was. Maybe when he has suffered a lot more, he’ll smarten up. You know that in everything God works for good, so it follows that God changes the afflicted by giving them their affliction. You three are so preoccupied with your notions of justice than you’re forgetting about God. Praise God’s greatness, and quit sweating the small stuff.
Scene 4
Fed up with all the arguments, God takes the stand personally.
God: What kind of arrogant worm are you, questioning my impartiality? Where were you, when I created the universe, when I established the four forces that hold everything together, when I put the sun and the stars into their orbits and established conditions that enabled life to flourish? Have you devised the Grand Unified Theory of Everything yet? Then quit finding fault with me!
Job: I have shot off my mouth. I will keep it zipped from here on.
God: No you won’t, because I gave you humans responsibilities. It’s not good enough for you to hunker down and act fatalistic. You must act on my behalf. You must create the justice you keep longing for. But don’t overestimate your abilities, and don’t start thinking that you are God.
Job: I spoke out of turn. I’m sorry.
Conclusion
Narrator: For being satisfied with fine words instead of actions, the three friends have to give away some of their own wealth to get Job started on the long process of recovery. Then and only then do his brothers and sisters come to share some of their own possessions with him. Eventually Job’s wealth and status is restored.
He has three daughters and seven sons. But he has obviously been changed by his encounter with God, because the story records the names of the daughters, but not of the sons. And it notes that in a radical departure from the customs of his time, he shared his estate equally with the daughters, as well as the sons.
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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 at shaw.ca. (Change the “at” to the “at” sign – you know the “a” with the circle around it. I’m trying to slow down the spammers.) Then 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 at shaw.ca.
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Friday, October 9, 2009
Preaching Materials for October 18, 2009
R U M O R S #571
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2009-10-11
October 11, 2009
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
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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. And if you need back issues, that’s where to find ‘em.
Thanks.
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ralphmilton at shaw.ca
Of course, you need to replace the word “at” with the symbol and remove the spaces. That won’t stop the spammers, but I hope it’ll slow them down a little.
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The Story – the agony of indecision
Rumors – children of the same womb
Soft Edges – intimate acts
Good Stuff – you thought I wasn’t looking
Bloopers – sphere heading
We Get Letters – supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Mirabile Dictu! – probably not kosher
Bottom of the Barrel – tracing your ancestry
Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Mark 10:35-45
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 – Unfortunately, this story is probably apocryphal.
One day, as the church parking lot filled up, people were surprised to find the doors to the church tightly locked. And there was a sign on the door.
It read: “I’ve been preaching here for three years about how we should live out the gospel in our daily lives. You must have heard the message. No go out and do something about it!”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, October 18th, which Proper 24 [29].
* Job 38:1-7, (34-41) or Isaiah 53:4-12
* Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c or Psalm 91:9-16
* Hebrews 5:1-10
* Mark 10:35-45
Job 38:1-7, (34-41) – Poor Job. The poor man has my sympathies all through the story. God and the satan (not the guy in red tights) put bets on his faithfulness, he survives his three “comforters” and their long winded irrelevancies, and how God throws the whole universe at him because the poor guy wants to know why all this is happening. But hang on. Next week we’ll do the Job story including the “they-lived-happily-ever-after” ending.
Psalm 104: 1-9, 24, 35c – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 The light draws me up towards itself.
It is bright, but not blinding;
warm, but it does not burn.
2 The light is friendly.
It reaches out its rays like a funnel
focused towards itself.
3 In its shining are all the colors of the earth,
all hues, all shades, all tints:
from yellow primula to scarlet tanager,
from anthracite to panther's eye.
4 It is all one.
No species can claim a special place;
no race has a corner on a personal color.
5 For you created them all, Lord.
6 The sea, the hills, the sky
7 rise up and fall down at your call.
8,9 All this is beyond my comprehension;
I can only affirm it, in awe and admiration.
1 Lord, you are light.
You are the light of my life.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Publications.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – Mark 10:35-45
In the continuing discussion about how much of the Christian Scriptures are historical and how much are mythology, this passage has the taste of reality about it. The brothers James and John start jockeying for a preferred position in Jesus “realm of glory” once he has defeated all the enemies and is in charge of the world.
“There’s going to be a lot of pain and struggle before we get there,” says Jesus. “Are you up for it?”
James and John, having no idea at all what Jesus is talking about, reply with great confidence. “We are!”
The other disciples hear about this and of course they are miffed. They don’t understand any more than James and John what is ahead for Jesus. And we, knowing the rest of the story, know that when Jesus is arrested and condemned to die, the disciples turn tail and run for their lives. To a man.
It’s only a few of the women, Mary Magdalene being the most prominent among his female disciples, who see it through to the bitter and painful end.
I cringe. At various points in my journey of faith I have made promises in front of the assembled community – promises I mostly forgot about before I returned to my seat. I identify with James and John. I fanaticize great acts of faithfulness and commitment while I am making those promises. Unlike James and John, I have never really been put to the test.
Hebrews 5:1-10 – I recall a Roman Catholic ordination service many years ago where this passage figured prominently. I’ve been to many protestant ordinations, and I don’t recall it ever being used. With more and more lay people moving into professional leadership and ministry positions in the church, the priestly role of clergy moves further and further into the background. Is that good or no? I really don’t know.
For children “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year B,” offers a story based on the “Servant Leader” readings in Isaiah chapters 40 -53. These are on page 214. The lectionary offers an alternate reading from Isaiah 53 for this Sunday. There’s also a story called “Everyone is a Helper,” based on the Mark 10 passage, which is on page 217.
There are children’s stories for every Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary, in “The Lectionary Story Bible,” by yours truly. If you don’t yet have a copy of this useful resource, 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
Or, if you live in Canada or the US, simply pick up the phone and dial 1 800 663 2775.
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Rumors – If you scratch the veneer of my persona you will find a ham actor. Actually, you don’t even have to scratch. Quite often, it oozes out like sap in new wood through a cheap paint job.
The theatre and the church are children of the same womb. They spring from a deep human need to act out the mystery, to recount the story, to relive the drama. Perhaps that’s because so much of our faith can never be adequately expressed in mere words.
In my days of travelling all over doing workshops, giving talks, etc., I encountered many clergy and other church leaders who had the skills and inclination that could have led them into theatre work.
Theatre is not a vocation for folk who wait around to be asked. Theatre involves going after the parts you want to play – going to auditions and trying to convince directors that you are just the right person for that particular role and that you are immensely talented.
Mardi Tindal is a friend and colleague of many, many years. Last summer she was elected as Moderator of the United Church of Canada. Like every moderatorial candidate, she had to work hard to be seen as not campaigning in any way. Any semblance of hats and bands and buttons, the way it happens at political conventions, would have ensured her defeat.
We have this “thing” in the church about not putting ourselves forward. We wait to be asked, never telling anyone what it is we would like to do, and then we feel hurt when nobody asks. But nowhere in the Bible are we told to cower in a corner waiting for our gifts to be discovered. We are explicitly told not to hide our light under a bushel, but to “let your light so shine” that people may see what you can do and they will let you do it and in the process declare the greatness of God.
In the gospel reading for next week, James and John are the heavies. They came from an entrepreneurial family. They owned a fishing business. They must have done quite well because Salome, their mother, was one of the women that supported Jesus in his ministry.
To do that, they had to go out and find the fish. Fish don’t usually come and jump into the boat. In Matthew’s version of this story (20:20-28) it is Salome who asks Jesus on behalf of her boys.
Salome, it seems to me, taught her children that if you want something to happen, you take some initiative. If you think you can do a job, you volunteer. If you think you can play the role, you try out. I wonder how influential Salome was for Jesus as he developed his concept of his role and ministry.
“All the world’s a stage,” said Will Shakespeare. And in every congregation there are disgruntled folk saying to themselves, “I could have done that better.” But it’s the audacious ones who try out for the parts and who get to play a role in the drama of salvation.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Intimate Acts
With Canadian Thanksgiving happening over this coming weekend, I began wondering what I might be grateful for.
And a surprising thing surfaced – this column.
The column is, in many ways, a mixed blessing. Each week, another deadline looms. Each week, I have to find another subject to write about; I have to marshal my thoughts, gather my research, organize my presentation...
Friend Doug Hodgkinson once asked, “How many times do you rewrite your columns?”
I don’t actually keep records of such matters, but I guess about three times, on average. I write the first draft just to get some ideas out of my head and onto paper (or screen, nowadays). I rewrite a second or sometimes a third time, to sharpen those ideas, to arrange them in a sequence most likely to move a reader, to refine the crude ore into something resembling precious metal. I rewrite a final time to polish the prose, to make it shine.
That’s a lot of work. And sometimes, to fit the column to its mandated 500-word limit, I have to perform emergency surgery on my favourite lines.
But writing the column is also a joy.
For about two years, while I was still an employee, I edited other people’s words but I wrote next to nothing myself. My mind stagnated. Unless my reading and my experiences connected with someone else’s words, I had little reason to pay attention.
Then the local weekly newspaper invited me to start writing a column. Suddenly I had a reason to pay attention. Everything that crossed my life became potential grist for the mill.
My mother once told me, “You need an audience.”
It’s a remarkably intimate relationship that we enter into, you and I, as reader and writer, and as audience and performer.
Paula Simons expressed it well, in the Edmonton Journal. “Whether you love my column or hate it,” she wrote, “you allow me to enter your mind.”
“I have to trust that you will make an effort to understand my words and engage with my ideas,” Simons continued. “And you have to trust that I will not waste your time or lead you astray. Our communion is utterly asexual, yet profoundly intimate.”
Our social culture tends to treat intimacy as exclusively sexual. Intimacy means that all the clothes are off, the barriers are down, there’s nothing between us, we merge as one...
But sex can also be a restrictive metaphor. There are other kinds of intimacy. The most intimate moment I have ever experienced happened at our son’s death, when a small group of us stood with our arms around each other, sobbing. There were no barriers. Emotionally, we became one body, united in grief.
When a column clicks, something similar happens. To quote Paula Simons again, “I enter, not your body, but your thoughts. And on a good day, perhaps your soul.”
That’s a rare privilege, and one for which I am indeed profoundly grateful.
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Good Stuff – This from Jim Spinks.
When You Thought I Wasn’t Looking
When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you hang my first painting on the refrigerator,
and I immediately wanted to paint another one. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you feed a stray cat,
and I learned that it was good to be kind to animals. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you make my favorite cake for me,
and I learned that the little things can be the special things in life. When you thought I wasn't looking
I heard you say a prayer,
and I knew that there is a God I could always talk to,
and I learned to trust in God. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you make a meal and take it to a friend who was sick,
and I learned that we all have to help take care of each other. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you take care of our house and everyone in it,
and I learned we have to take care of what we are given. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw how you handled your responsibilities,
even when you didn't feel good,
and I learned that I would have to be responsible when I grow up. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw tears come from your eyes,
and I learned that sometimes things hurt, but it's all right to cry. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw that you cared,
and I wanted to be everything that I could be.When you thought I wasn't looking
I learned most of life's lessons that I need to know to be a good and productive person when I grow up. When you thought I wasn't looking
I looked at you and wanted to say,
'Thanks for all the things I saw when you thought I wasn't looking.'
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – On the invitation to an international conference in Toronto: "I am sphere heading the event this time ..."
Heather Ebbs via Jim Taylor
A TV newscaster was reading an obituary on the air. The last sentence consisted of two words: "Interment following." The newscaster, instead, said, "Intermittingly flowing."
Bob Lewis
Our choir director’s first language is not English. Sometimes he gets frustrated because the choir doesn’t really pay attention to the directions in the music. One day he blurted out, “Do what zee music tells you. When it says ‘pp’ (very soft) I want you to go pee pee.”
Joyce Pritchard
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! – Comedy is an escape – not from truth but from despair.
Christopher Fry via Evelyn McLachlan
If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.
George Aiken via Evelyn McLachlan
The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for. source unknown via Mary of Oman
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We Get Letters – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
You all remember that song. Aaron Thorpe wrote asking for a set of theological words that he remembered to that tune. I remember them too, but I can’t find them in my files.
Does anyone out there in Rumors Land have them? If so, could you send it to me at my new e-mail address which is:
ralphmilton at shaw.ca
(remember to change the at to the symbol and remove the spaces). Then we can all enjoy them again.
Nancy in Nova Scotia heard a preacher say, “If you want to be happy for an hour win the lottery. If you want to be happy for a day go fishing. If you want to be happy for a month get married.”
Now, I was visiting, so did not rush right up to him and ask to meet his wife.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “probably not kosher!”)This from John Severson.
Things I Didn’t Learn In Hebrew School
* The High Holy Days have absolutely nothing to do with marijuana.
* Where there's smoke there may be salmon.
* No meal is complete without leftovers.
* According to Jewish dietary law, pork and shellfish may be eaten only in Chinese restaurants.
* A shmata is a dress that your husband's ex is wearing.
* You need ten men for a minion but only four in polyester pants and white shoes for pinochle.
* One mitzvah can change the world; two will just make you tired.
* Anything worth saying is worth repeating a thousand times.
* Next year in Jerusalem. The year after that, how about a nice cruise?
* WASPs leave and never say good-bye; Jews say good-bye and never leave.
* If it tastes good, it's probably not kosher.
* Without Jewish mothers, who would need therapy?
* If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. If you can afford it, make sure to tell everybody what you paid.
* Laugh now, but one day you'll be driving a Lexus and eating dinner at 4 p.m. in Florida.
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Bottom of the Barrel – The somewhat stuffy old man was boasting again. “Did you know that I can trace my ancestry right back to William the Conqueror?”
“That’s amazing,” said his guest, refusing to be drawn into this kind of game.
The old man wouldn’t give up. “How far can you trace your ancestry?”
“Ah, well,” said the guest. “We had to give up on that. All our family records were lost in Noah’s flood.”
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Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Mark 10:35-45
Reader 1: Have you ever been at a political party nominating convention?
Reader 2: No. But I’ve seen them on TV and read about them in the papers. They can turn into a real dog fight.
1: Have you ever stood up in church and made some promises?
2: Well, yeah. When I joined the church, I made some promises.
1: What did you promise?
2: Hmm. I can’t really remember.
1: So there’s not much point asking if you kept those promises.
2: So why are you grilling me like this?
1: Sorry. I really didn’t mean to put you on the hot seat. But this whole business of jockeying for position, and making promises you aren’t going to keep – that’s what this passage is all about.
2: I was looking at that passage. And your right, it does sound a lot like some of the political conventions where everyone if jockeying for top spot and making all kinds of promises they either can’t keep, or have no intention of keeping.
1: So let’s look at the passage. It’s from the 10th chapter of Mark.
(SLIGHT PAUSE)
1: James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus.
2: "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."1: "What is it you want me to do for you?"2: "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."1: "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"2: "We are able."
1: "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."2: When the ten disciples heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them all together.
1: "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
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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 at shaw.ca. (change the “at” to the “at” sign – you know the “a” with the circle around it. I’m trying to slow down the spammers.) Then 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 at shaw.ca.
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
2009-10-11
October 11, 2009
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
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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. And if you need back issues, that’s where to find ‘em.
Thanks.
Also note that I have a new e-mail address. When you send in those delightful contributions to Rumors, please send them to:
ralphmilton at shaw.ca
Of course, you need to replace the word “at” with the symbol and remove the spaces. That won’t stop the spammers, but I hope it’ll slow them down a little.
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The Story – the agony of indecision
Rumors – children of the same womb
Soft Edges – intimate acts
Good Stuff – you thought I wasn’t looking
Bloopers – sphere heading
We Get Letters – supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Mirabile Dictu! – probably not kosher
Bottom of the Barrel – tracing your ancestry
Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Mark 10:35-45
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 – Unfortunately, this story is probably apocryphal.
One day, as the church parking lot filled up, people were surprised to find the doors to the church tightly locked. And there was a sign on the door.
It read: “I’ve been preaching here for three years about how we should live out the gospel in our daily lives. You must have heard the message. No go out and do something about it!”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, October 18th, which Proper 24 [29].
* Job 38:1-7, (34-41) or Isaiah 53:4-12
* Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c or Psalm 91:9-16
* Hebrews 5:1-10
* Mark 10:35-45
Job 38:1-7, (34-41) – Poor Job. The poor man has my sympathies all through the story. God and the satan (not the guy in red tights) put bets on his faithfulness, he survives his three “comforters” and their long winded irrelevancies, and how God throws the whole universe at him because the poor guy wants to know why all this is happening. But hang on. Next week we’ll do the Job story including the “they-lived-happily-ever-after” ending.
Psalm 104: 1-9, 24, 35c – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 The light draws me up towards itself.
It is bright, but not blinding;
warm, but it does not burn.
2 The light is friendly.
It reaches out its rays like a funnel
focused towards itself.
3 In its shining are all the colors of the earth,
all hues, all shades, all tints:
from yellow primula to scarlet tanager,
from anthracite to panther's eye.
4 It is all one.
No species can claim a special place;
no race has a corner on a personal color.
5 For you created them all, Lord.
6 The sea, the hills, the sky
7 rise up and fall down at your call.
8,9 All this is beyond my comprehension;
I can only affirm it, in awe and admiration.
1 Lord, you are light.
You are the light of my life.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Publications.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
The Story (from the Revised Common Lectionary) – Mark 10:35-45
In the continuing discussion about how much of the Christian Scriptures are historical and how much are mythology, this passage has the taste of reality about it. The brothers James and John start jockeying for a preferred position in Jesus “realm of glory” once he has defeated all the enemies and is in charge of the world.
“There’s going to be a lot of pain and struggle before we get there,” says Jesus. “Are you up for it?”
James and John, having no idea at all what Jesus is talking about, reply with great confidence. “We are!”
The other disciples hear about this and of course they are miffed. They don’t understand any more than James and John what is ahead for Jesus. And we, knowing the rest of the story, know that when Jesus is arrested and condemned to die, the disciples turn tail and run for their lives. To a man.
It’s only a few of the women, Mary Magdalene being the most prominent among his female disciples, who see it through to the bitter and painful end.
I cringe. At various points in my journey of faith I have made promises in front of the assembled community – promises I mostly forgot about before I returned to my seat. I identify with James and John. I fanaticize great acts of faithfulness and commitment while I am making those promises. Unlike James and John, I have never really been put to the test.
Hebrews 5:1-10 – I recall a Roman Catholic ordination service many years ago where this passage figured prominently. I’ve been to many protestant ordinations, and I don’t recall it ever being used. With more and more lay people moving into professional leadership and ministry positions in the church, the priestly role of clergy moves further and further into the background. Is that good or no? I really don’t know.
For children “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year B,” offers a story based on the “Servant Leader” readings in Isaiah chapters 40 -53. These are on page 214. The lectionary offers an alternate reading from Isaiah 53 for this Sunday. There’s also a story called “Everyone is a Helper,” based on the Mark 10 passage, which is on page 217.
There are children’s stories for every Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary, in “The Lectionary Story Bible,” by yours truly. If you don’t yet have a copy of this useful resource, 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
Or, if you live in Canada or the US, simply pick up the phone and dial 1 800 663 2775.
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Rumors – If you scratch the veneer of my persona you will find a ham actor. Actually, you don’t even have to scratch. Quite often, it oozes out like sap in new wood through a cheap paint job.
The theatre and the church are children of the same womb. They spring from a deep human need to act out the mystery, to recount the story, to relive the drama. Perhaps that’s because so much of our faith can never be adequately expressed in mere words.
In my days of travelling all over doing workshops, giving talks, etc., I encountered many clergy and other church leaders who had the skills and inclination that could have led them into theatre work.
Theatre is not a vocation for folk who wait around to be asked. Theatre involves going after the parts you want to play – going to auditions and trying to convince directors that you are just the right person for that particular role and that you are immensely talented.
Mardi Tindal is a friend and colleague of many, many years. Last summer she was elected as Moderator of the United Church of Canada. Like every moderatorial candidate, she had to work hard to be seen as not campaigning in any way. Any semblance of hats and bands and buttons, the way it happens at political conventions, would have ensured her defeat.
We have this “thing” in the church about not putting ourselves forward. We wait to be asked, never telling anyone what it is we would like to do, and then we feel hurt when nobody asks. But nowhere in the Bible are we told to cower in a corner waiting for our gifts to be discovered. We are explicitly told not to hide our light under a bushel, but to “let your light so shine” that people may see what you can do and they will let you do it and in the process declare the greatness of God.
In the gospel reading for next week, James and John are the heavies. They came from an entrepreneurial family. They owned a fishing business. They must have done quite well because Salome, their mother, was one of the women that supported Jesus in his ministry.
To do that, they had to go out and find the fish. Fish don’t usually come and jump into the boat. In Matthew’s version of this story (20:20-28) it is Salome who asks Jesus on behalf of her boys.
Salome, it seems to me, taught her children that if you want something to happen, you take some initiative. If you think you can do a job, you volunteer. If you think you can play the role, you try out. I wonder how influential Salome was for Jesus as he developed his concept of his role and ministry.
“All the world’s a stage,” said Will Shakespeare. And in every congregation there are disgruntled folk saying to themselves, “I could have done that better.” But it’s the audacious ones who try out for the parts and who get to play a role in the drama of salvation.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Intimate Acts
With Canadian Thanksgiving happening over this coming weekend, I began wondering what I might be grateful for.
And a surprising thing surfaced – this column.
The column is, in many ways, a mixed blessing. Each week, another deadline looms. Each week, I have to find another subject to write about; I have to marshal my thoughts, gather my research, organize my presentation...
Friend Doug Hodgkinson once asked, “How many times do you rewrite your columns?”
I don’t actually keep records of such matters, but I guess about three times, on average. I write the first draft just to get some ideas out of my head and onto paper (or screen, nowadays). I rewrite a second or sometimes a third time, to sharpen those ideas, to arrange them in a sequence most likely to move a reader, to refine the crude ore into something resembling precious metal. I rewrite a final time to polish the prose, to make it shine.
That’s a lot of work. And sometimes, to fit the column to its mandated 500-word limit, I have to perform emergency surgery on my favourite lines.
But writing the column is also a joy.
For about two years, while I was still an employee, I edited other people’s words but I wrote next to nothing myself. My mind stagnated. Unless my reading and my experiences connected with someone else’s words, I had little reason to pay attention.
Then the local weekly newspaper invited me to start writing a column. Suddenly I had a reason to pay attention. Everything that crossed my life became potential grist for the mill.
My mother once told me, “You need an audience.”
It’s a remarkably intimate relationship that we enter into, you and I, as reader and writer, and as audience and performer.
Paula Simons expressed it well, in the Edmonton Journal. “Whether you love my column or hate it,” she wrote, “you allow me to enter your mind.”
“I have to trust that you will make an effort to understand my words and engage with my ideas,” Simons continued. “And you have to trust that I will not waste your time or lead you astray. Our communion is utterly asexual, yet profoundly intimate.”
Our social culture tends to treat intimacy as exclusively sexual. Intimacy means that all the clothes are off, the barriers are down, there’s nothing between us, we merge as one...
But sex can also be a restrictive metaphor. There are other kinds of intimacy. The most intimate moment I have ever experienced happened at our son’s death, when a small group of us stood with our arms around each other, sobbing. There were no barriers. Emotionally, we became one body, united in grief.
When a column clicks, something similar happens. To quote Paula Simons again, “I enter, not your body, but your thoughts. And on a good day, perhaps your soul.”
That’s a rare privilege, and one for which I am indeed profoundly grateful.
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Good Stuff – This from Jim Spinks.
When You Thought I Wasn’t Looking
When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you hang my first painting on the refrigerator,
and I immediately wanted to paint another one. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you feed a stray cat,
and I learned that it was good to be kind to animals. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you make my favorite cake for me,
and I learned that the little things can be the special things in life. When you thought I wasn't looking
I heard you say a prayer,
and I knew that there is a God I could always talk to,
and I learned to trust in God. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you make a meal and take it to a friend who was sick,
and I learned that we all have to help take care of each other. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw you take care of our house and everyone in it,
and I learned we have to take care of what we are given. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw how you handled your responsibilities,
even when you didn't feel good,
and I learned that I would have to be responsible when I grow up. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw tears come from your eyes,
and I learned that sometimes things hurt, but it's all right to cry. When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw that you cared,
and I wanted to be everything that I could be.When you thought I wasn't looking
I learned most of life's lessons that I need to know to be a good and productive person when I grow up. When you thought I wasn't looking
I looked at you and wanted to say,
'Thanks for all the things I saw when you thought I wasn't looking.'
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – On the invitation to an international conference in Toronto: "I am sphere heading the event this time ..."
Heather Ebbs via Jim Taylor
A TV newscaster was reading an obituary on the air. The last sentence consisted of two words: "Interment following." The newscaster, instead, said, "Intermittingly flowing."
Bob Lewis
Our choir director’s first language is not English. Sometimes he gets frustrated because the choir doesn’t really pay attention to the directions in the music. One day he blurted out, “Do what zee music tells you. When it says ‘pp’ (very soft) I want you to go pee pee.”
Joyce Pritchard
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! – Comedy is an escape – not from truth but from despair.
Christopher Fry via Evelyn McLachlan
If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.
George Aiken via Evelyn McLachlan
The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for. source unknown via Mary of Oman
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We Get Letters – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
You all remember that song. Aaron Thorpe wrote asking for a set of theological words that he remembered to that tune. I remember them too, but I can’t find them in my files.
Does anyone out there in Rumors Land have them? If so, could you send it to me at my new e-mail address which is:
ralphmilton at shaw.ca
(remember to change the at to the symbol and remove the spaces). Then we can all enjoy them again.
Nancy in Nova Scotia heard a preacher say, “If you want to be happy for an hour win the lottery. If you want to be happy for a day go fishing. If you want to be happy for a month get married.”
Now, I was visiting, so did not rush right up to him and ask to meet his wife.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “probably not kosher!”)This from John Severson.
Things I Didn’t Learn In Hebrew School
* The High Holy Days have absolutely nothing to do with marijuana.
* Where there's smoke there may be salmon.
* No meal is complete without leftovers.
* According to Jewish dietary law, pork and shellfish may be eaten only in Chinese restaurants.
* A shmata is a dress that your husband's ex is wearing.
* You need ten men for a minion but only four in polyester pants and white shoes for pinochle.
* One mitzvah can change the world; two will just make you tired.
* Anything worth saying is worth repeating a thousand times.
* Next year in Jerusalem. The year after that, how about a nice cruise?
* WASPs leave and never say good-bye; Jews say good-bye and never leave.
* If it tastes good, it's probably not kosher.
* Without Jewish mothers, who would need therapy?
* If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. If you can afford it, make sure to tell everybody what you paid.
* Laugh now, but one day you'll be driving a Lexus and eating dinner at 4 p.m. in Florida.
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Bottom of the Barrel – The somewhat stuffy old man was boasting again. “Did you know that I can trace my ancestry right back to William the Conqueror?”
“That’s amazing,” said his guest, refusing to be drawn into this kind of game.
The old man wouldn’t give up. “How far can you trace your ancestry?”
“Ah, well,” said the guest. “We had to give up on that. All our family records were lost in Noah’s flood.”
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Scripture Story as Reader’s Theatre – Mark 10:35-45
Reader 1: Have you ever been at a political party nominating convention?
Reader 2: No. But I’ve seen them on TV and read about them in the papers. They can turn into a real dog fight.
1: Have you ever stood up in church and made some promises?
2: Well, yeah. When I joined the church, I made some promises.
1: What did you promise?
2: Hmm. I can’t really remember.
1: So there’s not much point asking if you kept those promises.
2: So why are you grilling me like this?
1: Sorry. I really didn’t mean to put you on the hot seat. But this whole business of jockeying for position, and making promises you aren’t going to keep – that’s what this passage is all about.
2: I was looking at that passage. And your right, it does sound a lot like some of the political conventions where everyone if jockeying for top spot and making all kinds of promises they either can’t keep, or have no intention of keeping.
1: So let’s look at the passage. It’s from the 10th chapter of Mark.
(SLIGHT PAUSE)
1: James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus.
2: "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."1: "What is it you want me to do for you?"2: "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."1: "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"2: "We are able."
1: "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."2: When the ten disciples heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them all together.
1: "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
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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 at shaw.ca. (change the “at” to the “at” sign – you know the “a” with the circle around it. I’m trying to slow down the spammers.) Then 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 at shaw.ca.
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
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