A huge thank you to Harold Messer, Arlin Middleton, John Dills and Guy Hall for their work cleaning the carpet in the Mission and Fellowship Center!
Back to School Supplies
Dorothy Edwards Circle is again collecting school supplies for children whose parents can't supply them. We need:
paper
pens
crayons
pencils
pencil sharpeners
small packs of tissues
composition books
regular sized backpacks
colored pencils
glue sticks
small staplers and staples
We will be concentrating on 1st Explorers students this year so it will be a younger group of students. Please place items in the box in the Loving Kindness room across from the choir room by August 11th. Thank you!
The Underside of the Ark
I loved haircut day when I was a child. Haircut day was always a Saturday and was forever a father-son event. The trimming of hair, however, was but one element in the hour-long experience. Let me explain.
The barbershop was always full when my father and I would arrive. Most haircut days, my father would give me a quarter while we listened to the men’s banter and while we watched as hair was swept up between customers. You see, there was an old Coca-Cola machine in the corner full of glass bottles of the sweet, bubbly elixir. The machine was an engineering marvel. Below the coin slot was a narrow, vertical glass window. Inside were serval chilled pop-tops in descending order, held captive by a complex system of bars and levers. You could open the glass door to caress the tops of the refrigerated bottles, but you could not pull one out without depositing .25 in the slot. Of course, as a child I would yank on each bottle hoping that the machine was faulty and that it would yield to my tug, granting me a free drink. My father’s quarter, though, would provide me with the delicious sensation of pulling out a liberated bottle of Coke. And oh, the taste of those frosty, glass-bottled Cokes. Shasta. For me, haircuts and Coca-Cola just went together.
But that was not all.
Lost in a rack of newspapers and magazines was an oversized illustrated Bible for children. I loved that Bible and its pictures of memorable stories from scripture. The details in each picture gave rich insight into the stories I heard at home and at church. Adam and Eve were beautiful, shapely and discreetly covered by foliage. David’s diminutive stature was showcased by the gargantuan bully named Goliath. And the still waters and green pastures of the 23rd Psalm gave my imagination fuel to grasp David’s prayer.
But the story that I always studied more closely than others was The Story of the Flood. Time seemed to slow down when I got to the tale of Noah and his ark, and I secretly hoped that I wouldn’t be called for my cut until the illustrations had exhausted my scrutiny.
The ark in the pictures was magnificent. The animals were regal. Noah was wild-eyed, but stoic. The next page revealed the storm clouds and the nearby raging river. Then, in an inset picture was the ark surrounded by flood waters.
I could imagine the sensation of the boat being lifted off the ground. I could hear the wicked banging on the boat’s timbers. The animals would be nervous, of course, but well-cared-for. Noah and his family would feel vindicated and rewarded as they huddled together in warmth and safety as the world disappeared beneath the waves.
Then, on the following page there was a picture of Noah with a raven leaning out a window of the ark. Later, a dove was seen returning with a leaf from a tree. Finally, there was a solitary picture of Noah, looking wistfully off into the distance with no dove to be seen.
The final picture always seemed rushed. In the illustration I remember, the ark is set upon a rocky mountain top. The door is open and animals are spilling out onto the ramp. An altar has been constructed to the right of the picture and a rainbow arches across the scene.
This well-known story is a favorite because it seems to have everything you want in a good story. There are animals, wicked naysayers, and righteous protagonists. The story has an extraordinary natural disaster and an apocalyptic aftermath that provides suspense. There’s resolution, too, right? A new beginning, a rainbow, and a thankful people.
Years later, I would see how the appeal of this story had spread. Noah and the Ark would become the theme for nurseries in homes, churches and at day care centers. Snappy songs were sung to tell of the animals’ salvation as they marched into the Ark, “two by two.” An entire line of toys would become available—a zoo with a boat, cool! The rainbow would become a symbol of God’s enduring love.
Yes, the story of Noah and the Ark from Genesis 6-8 is one of the best-known stories from the Bible. But like many of the stories we love to tell from the Bible, we tell only a portion of the story or turn down the volume on the unsavory, difficult elements. A keen eye and a close read of the text, however, will reveal a dark and tragic story. The story that helps to build the foundation for God’s relationship with His creation is about salvation, yes. But it’s also about holocaust. While it’s tempting to fawn over the animals and their lifeboat, we must also acknowledge the mass of floating dead that fill the waters around the ark. Where are they in our retellings? The story of the ark is not cute. It’s sorrowful and full of sadness, replete with remorse.
God regretted creating us. “And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (Genesis 6:6)” So, God decides to start over, never mind that starting over meant “blotting out” mankind.
This is a hard, hard story complete with a foretaste of sobering themes that we later find in the Bible. Issues of God’s justice, divine violence, and selective love and preservation litter the Biblical landscape, here. But many of us don’t see—or don’t wish to see---the underside of the ark. And at some level, that’s understandable. My children played with a toy ark. I did not tell them that when they played with the animals and the boat that they were playing holocaust.
It is imperative that we read scripture as adults and that we revisit the stories that we thought we knew well. The Bible, and its collection of stories about God’s relationship with us, is full of truth. And that truth may be hard to hear, but it teaches us about the depth, complexity and richness of God.
Although it’s hard to illustrate and even harder to make into a play-thing, this well-known story introduces us to a God who gets angry, a God who is sad, a God who regrets, a God who loves, a God who apologizes, and a God who is full of promises that He keeps.
This is why we read the Bible. This is why we tell the stories of the Bible to our children.
But this is also why we should continue to read and reflect upon them well into adulthood. They may not go down as easily as a frosty coke from a bottle, but they will—with prayer and quiet reflection—be just as satisfying and fulfilling.
Family Picnic at Waterrock Knob
Join us for a church-wide family picnic on Sunday, July 16 at 4:00 PM. Don’t forget to bring your best potluck dishes! Drinks will be provided by the church.
We will let everyone know by Friday afternoon if the weather forecast does not look promising.
Church Picnic this Sunday Afternoon
Join us up on the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 451 on Sunday, July 16th at 4:00 PM with your lawn chairs or blanket, and your tasty food offering.
Christmas in July?
Our sermon series this month is taking a step away from our broader theme to consider passages of scripture that get little-to-no air time in our faith tradition. “Danger, Do Not Enter: Sermons That Shouldn’t Be Preached,” captures this pursuit fairly well. It also gives a well-heeded warning to both the proclaimer and the listener (Let’s just hope no one gets seriously injured this month, okay?).
As we will discover, the Bible stories we’ll be looking at in July didn’t make the cut in our faithful imagination because they were boring. Hardly. The stories that we will study on Sunday mornings in July are tales that are difficult to hear, hard to swallow, and taboo in one way or the other. But they all have something to teach us about ourselves and about God.
If, therefore, I spend our Sunday mornings during the month of July looking at scripture that may not crack the ‘Biblical Top 40,’ perhaps it would be a good exercise in the July editions of our Chimes Newsletter to examine a few of the passages that seem to garner so much of the attention in our faith experience. Here’s my contention: I’m not so sure that the most familiar stories from the Bible capture the length and breadth of God’s truth. Perhaps our affection for these well-known stories can teach us something about our own predilections and peccadillos. Maybe, if we’re daring, we can recognize the liabilities of locating the entirety of our religious experience in one particular story or another.
From my vantage point, the most popular and well-known Bible story is contained in the Infancy Narratives from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. I’m talking about the Christmas Story, y’all. In our setting, even the most novice of religious observers can sketch out the framework for how Jesus was born to a virgin in Bethlehem. Even in our increasingly secularized culture, the trappings of Jesus’ birth still root our economy’s most lucrative holiday. Stars, stables, ‘all-things-babies,’ miracles, hope, love, cute and cuddly farm animals, peace, and ‘Ancient-Near-East-at-Twilight’ scenes all point to the story that Christians claim as the foundation of our faith.
So, what have we gotten wrong about this incredible story?
Answer: Which part? Because, when it comes to the story of Jesus’ birth, we get much of it wrong. Let’s start with the details.
In an effort to accommodate our own ideas for how the birth of Jesus should have occurred, or to tidy a story that seems rough around the edges, much of the story has been stretched. Stories always get pulled in a number of directions when they are retold, but when adherents of a faith cannot sort fact from fiction in a story they claim to be so important, we’ve got a problem.
Consider this:
-Much to the chagrin of would-be children’s book authors, the Bible has no reference to a kindly innkeeper in the story of Jesus’s birth.
-Yet again, unfortunately, there is no reference to barnyard animals surrounding the Holy Family in the stable.
-Mary did not ride a donkey to Bethlehem.
-It didn’t snow that first Christmas, as it was (inconveniently) spring.
-The angels were, according to the Bible, men who did not have wings.
-And, we don’t know how many Wise Men visited Jesus. Furthermore, they most-certainly didn’t find him as a baby, let alone in a stable.
Does any of this matter? Probably not. In all fairness, it’s a story told over two distinct accounts in scripture. Even the best of us mix it up at Christmas. But our inability to parse fact from fiction does not say much for our ability to be trusted on Biblical matters.
The other element that we get wrong about the Christmas story is its respective place in Church history. For much of Christian history, the birth of Jesus as an event was not heralded or celebrated. In fact, the first observance in the early church was the season of Lent…not Easter, and not Christmas. Lent—the faithful’s preparation for Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross—was the first and most celebrated Christian holiday. Let that sink in for a moment. Until the Victorian Era in the late 19th century, church leaders cautioned their parishioners from making much of a fuss at Christmas, lest the holiday become a raucous day of drunkenness and debauchery. Sobriety and an attitude of holy contemplation would win the day for centuries. The most normative Christmas observance through the ages was one where the faithful quietly and humbly acknowledged the arrival of Jesus in our world.
Followers of Jesus and secular observers can all find something lovely to latch on to in the Christmas story. But from the perspective of a circumspect Christian, we’ve got to acknowledge that the Christmas story is but one element in the broader epic between God and God’s people.
Admit it, a cute and cuddly Messiah is preferable to a wild-eyed prophet who calls us on our sin. Of course, we’re going to be drawn to the babe in a manger. We’ll learn soon enough that the Son of God will preach a message that will make him enemies and get him killed. If pressed, I daresay that we’d prefer the image of ‘mother and child’ over a Christ who is beaten and bruised. It’s not hard to see why we love the story of Christ’s birth, but we’ve got to be careful that we don’t adore it to the detriment of Christ’s message and ministry in the heart of his adulthood. My point? We cannot hide behind the manger and an infant Messiah. We’ve got to locate the gravity of our attention to Jesus’s message after his time in diapers.
Our predilection toward ‘Away in a Manger’ over Jesus cursing the fig tree is a dangerous truth to lift up at any time of the year. But, I’m hopeful that our relative distance from the most euphoric and nostalgic of holidays will give us a bit of perspective.
Let there be no doubt, Christmas is the loveliest of Bible stories. But it is one story in a collection of stories that reveals the truth of our sinfulness and our need for a prophetic, truth-speaking Messiah who will lead and save us.
Stories are funny things. We tend to shape them to fit our needs and desires. The Bible is a collection of God’s stories that contains sweeping sagas that run the gamut from hope and defeat to joy and sorrow. But above all, the Bible tells us the truth. As followers of the ‘Way, the Truth and the Life,’ let’s make sure we hear all of it.
Enneagram Group Meeting
Join us on Sunday, July 9th at 4:30 PM in the Gathering Place for our Enneagram group meeting. The Enneagram (which means nine-sided figure) is an ancient Christian tool that can help us to better know ourselves and to be gracious with others.
All are welcome to join, even if you missed our other meetings! The book that we will be using, while helpful, is optional. We will be offering childcare for our 90 minute experience.
As the authors of our book (The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery) Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile will articulate: "The purpose of the Enneagram is to develop self-knowledge and learn how to recognize and dis-identify with the parts of our personalities that limit us so we can be reunited with our truest and best selves, that “pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven,” as Thomas Merton said. The point of it is self-understanding and growing beyond the self-defeating dimensions of our personality, as well as improving relationships and growing in compassion for others."
A Note from Circles of Hope
Dear Friends,
As always, your most generous donation to Jackson County Circles of Hope is greatly appreciated! You totally went up and beyond generosity! Our latest class is about to graduate from our in-depth program and that will be followed up with a community person to be their mentor for the next two years or so.
Through these classes and being matched with mentors of our community with past graduates has helped our endeavor to address underlying causes of poverty and helping people attain economic stability. Circles of Hope is completely funded by personal donations like yours and from small special grants.
Let us share with you a special message from one of our Circle Leaders in training:
"I am so excited that our lives are already changing in positive ways. Circles has given me back 'hope' that I had almost lost sight of for me and my son."
Truly, all of you are demonstrating your compassion for others. We thank you immensely and encourage all of you to stay involved with Circles of Hope; our community needs enthusiastic and caring people like you!
God Bless!
Sincerely,
Laura Wallace
Children's Hope Alliance
Children’s Hope Alliance, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, provided services to more than 3,600 children, families and individuals in 2015.
The NC Department of Health and Human Services reports that over 200,000 children needed the type of services we provide but only half of those children received help. Our goal at Children’s Hope Alliance is to work toward closing this gap so that ALL children and families in North Carolina will receive the help they need.
Children's Hope Alliance provides services in 77+ NC counties and have 16 different office locations.
Items received from this list will benefit the children of Hawthorne Heights in Bryson City.
Children’s Hope Alliance Needs List
Paper Towels
Paper Napkins
Toilet Paper
Hand Soap Refills
Laundry Detergent (preferably liquid)
Dish Soap
Dish Washer Detergent
Fabric Softener
Toothpaste (preferable regular tubes, not travel size)
Sheet Sets (for boys and girls, full-size beds)
Non-Perishable Food Items (peanut butter, soups, spaghetti sauce, beans, apple sauce, Hamburger Helper, etc.)
A box is in the FBC Loving Kindness Room. Thank you!
FCA Yard Sale Fundraiser
A yard sale fundraiser to benefit the Jackson County Fellowship of Christian Athletes beginning Thursday, July 6 and continuing through Saturday, July 8 will be held at the Balsam Fire Department. The yard sale will begin Thursday at 3:00 pm until 6:30 pm and continue Friday and Saturday from 8:00 am through 6:30 pm. The public is invited to come and shop a huge inventory of furniture, home decor, collectibles, and much more. All proceeds will benefit FCA and Heritage Christian Academy. Much appreciation to Tammy Fuller, owner of Sassy Frass Consignment of Sylva, for donating all the merchandise to benefit these local ministries.