Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Cup and Saucer (08/28/14)
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TITLE: Do Sacred Cows make Tasty Hamburgers? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Noel Mitaxa
09/04/14 -
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This regulatory welcome surprised my wife, who had chosen to sit beside some elderly ladies four rows from the front. She glanced up to catch the eye of her new-found lawmaker.
In reply, the eye winked down at her from behind wire-frame spectacles which perched on a hook-nose. A wry smile harmonised a maze of facial wrinkles. Then a whisper, “Some folks enjoy making mountains out of molehills, mainly ’cause they can’t make anything else!”
Sister Effie had stepped into our lives.
It was day one of pastoring a small country church in our final year of ministry training, and as a recently-married couple we quickly came to love her. There was a breath of fresh air in her wisdom―picturesque pearls after the bland, often-rarefied input of theological academia…
“On a clear day, some people can see the end of their noses!
“Why don’t they see past their stupid little rules?”
“A few years ago, old Sister Meredith was almost fit to kill a preacher when he didn’t fold a communion-table cloth properly. She reminded me of the Pharisees who Jesus described as only washing the outside of the cup and leaving it dirty inside. And when he accused them of straining out a tiny gnat so carefully before gulping down a camel from the same cup! Talk about majoring on minor issues.”
With many years of ministry now behind me, helping people to majoring on major issues has been a continuing struggle, for too many people find it too easy to promote procedure over purpose. Which brings some ironic questions to mind…
Should we check ransom notes for spelling mistakes before we take them seriously?
Would we really be educating cannibals by teaching to eat with knives and forks?
Could we make vampires more socially-acceptable―by encouraging them to drink from a cup instead of straight from their victims’ necks―or would any such effort be totally in vein?
However, any time I feel any need for a degree in psycho-ceramics―from being surrounded by so many crackpots, Sister Effie’s cup and saucer pearls rebound into my mind. These pearls cut through the conflict or the confusion, to remind me that God still allows simple things to dismantle any upstart sophistication―even my own. For Jesus drew from the same simplicity; affirming how a simple cup of water given in his name would outweigh the most lavish religious rituals.
Another cup was the main feature of the last Passover he ever celebrated. Filling it with wine, to share it with those he’d grown to love over three and a half years of ministry, he urged them, “This cup is the new agreement sealed with my blood for the remission of sins. Drink from it, all of you.”
After this twilight meal, they went out to a nearby hillside garden, where he went on alone into the encroaching, star-studded blackness. In this darkness, knowing that he was to endure three illegal trials before dawn absorbed this gloom, he begged, “Father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me… Yet not my will, but yours be done.”
This cup was filled with love―even for the lynch mob which was about to be whipped up into a mania that connected with the coward gene of a cynical Roman pro-consul’s DNA. Love that still radiates over two millennia later to keep cynicism at bay with a thirst-quenching offer of healing and hope for anyone who is looking to break free in a petty, distorted world.
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Loved it. Excellent work.
God bless~
Great job reminding us how important a lesson that is. Anything less is a reflection of us putting material things or rituals ahead of Christ and the sinners he loves.
And don't think for a second that I didn't spot that whole sentence regarding vampires and veins. I saw that Mitaxa! I got my eye on you! :)
This makes me think of a minister who liked to say 'Always keep the main thing the main thing.'
It's amazing, isn't it, that Jesus took our cup of sin and drank it, so that we could drink a cup of blessing.
As always, great writing.
But then the puns started to run through the veins of the story and I felt far more at ease.
As always, brilliant, entertaining and educational.
Blessings.
Love love LOVE the puns, and the title!!