The cover is a take from the story of the Samaritan woman, someone who has more strikes against her than a bona fide harlot like Rahab. Not only does Jesus speak to her, he protects her from the putrid self-righteousness of the Pharisees by asking them a pointed question that has gathered its own legacy through the ages: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
What's not as closely remembered as that line is that Jesus then bent down and, with his finger, wrote in the dirt. Strangely enough, what he wrote is not recorded.
The title of the book is taken from a sermon, one of twenty+ in a new book of meds by Pastor Herm Van Niejenhuis, a quiet, unassuming preacher blessed with a unique style of laying out the truths of scripture, a memorable style. If great preachers come in the thundering of Billy Graham or Billy Sunday, Pastor Herm wouldn't make the grade. Sunday after Sunday, humbly, he brought his parishioners into what he himself thought of as the revealing eccentrities of the word, stories of grace.
During his 37-years behind the pulpit, Pastor Herm Van Niejenhuis (Nee'-en-hice) served churches in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and then, close to retirement, here, in Sioux Center, IA. If taking a call to northwest Iowa seems out of place, his coming here was something of homecoming since he and his wife Deadre (Plowman) had, many years before, gone to Dordt College, met there, fallen in love, and spent their first married year in a drafty trailer on the far reaches of the campus.
Parishioners at Covenant CRC remember him in a favorite pose, holding the Bible in one hand while unconsciously patting the text with the other, as if, like a cat, the Word needed to be loved, or as King David might say, exalted. During his last sermon, he told the congregation that an 18-inch pile of old church bulletins spanning his pastorate could be filed away under one word: grace. The sermons collected in this fine, little collection of meditations offer a very similar assessment.
Fascinating, isn't it?--that exactly what Jesus wrote with his finger in the dust beneath his feet and the feet of the Samaritan woman that memorable day isn't recorded. We don't know what he wrote. We know lots about Christ, but that word is gone.
That's exactly the kind of mystery Pastor Herm loved to open up. These meditations are art really, a warm and wonderful collection from a good friend and great pastor.
1 comment:
Thanks for this brief review.
As a "retired" (but still preaching in congregations that don't have a pastor), there is one conjecture re what Jesus wrote - the sins of each of the woman's accusers.
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