Rebuked in the name of Jesus

I don’t blame the mainstream media for making fun of Christians, because there are times that I certainly want to, like the one and only time I visited Des Moines, Iowa.  I traveled with a vacation Bible School organization known as Neighborhood Bible Time in the summer of 1996.  For the most part it was an amazing time.  3 weeks of training in Colorado led to 10 weeks of going to 10 different churches in 7 different states with another “NBT evangelist”.  The stories I could tell from that summer are endless, but you have to start somewhere, so I begin here, in the central United States, a hot bed of conservatism and the corn fields of moon pies and RC Cola.

My partner, Dave and I had traveled to Ohio and Michigan, and for week three we had the honor of hanging in the 4 lettered state not known as Ohio or Utah.  I had only traveled through the state, so I looked forward to spending the week at this most important of political states (cough, cough).

Though we worked as a team, Dave and I had our separate functions on the team.  I worked with the elementary students, teaching, singing songs, and showing magic tricks like nobody’s business, and Dave worked with the teenagers, playing football, throwing water balloons, and eating lots of junk food – so basically having a way better time than me.

I taught two sessions per day.  One consisted of all the 1st through 3rd graders who came to “Bible Time” and the other included all the 4th through 6th graders who were along for the ride. I met with each group for about an hour.  Training was actually long and arduous that took a lot of effort, yet provided a lot of fun too.  One magic trick I used was called the Burning Bible. The point was to teach kids that the Bible is forever, that it is God’s Word and it will endure.

For whatever reason my bosses instructed me never to show this trick to the younger 1st through 3rd graders, but to restrict this particular trick to the older children.  So week after week, when it came time to run through my games, music, stories, and magic tricks, I would skip “the Burning Bible” for the young kids and go with something a bit less daunting. This week in Iowa the kids were crazy!  They cheered louder than the places I’d been so far, and they were having a blast with Mr. Marty and his most excellent entertainment techniques.

On the 2nd of 5 days of meeting, the 1st – 3rd grade kids were just going nuts, which meant that I was on my game.  They were captivated and laughing and silent when I asked them to be.  I had them in the palm of my hand.  Things were going so well that about half way through, I turned around and grabbed the first thing that I could find because I didn’t want to lose momentum, and in my head as I grabbed the Burning Bible trick I said,  Ya know, it’s just this one time, and I have no clue why I can’t show the kids this anyway, so…

As I suspected, the kids were enamored with my new trick.  Their mouths dropped to the floor and it was almost like they weren’t listening when I explained to them that the Bible was God’s Word, and that it will endure forever.  They were so quiet, I then went into story time, and the rest of the morning went so smoothly, I continued to dwell on the fact that I was the man, and that my 20 year old self was an amazing teacher to these young children.

I thought nothing of the event as the rest of the day went great and that night Dave had a great time with the teenagers too.  The next day we had the same great kind of a day as before, minus the Burning Bible trick, though some kids asked for it again, to which I ignored them and continued doing the other things I had been trained to do.  After the meeting that morning, Dave and I were quite tired, so we headed out the door around 1:00 pm for lunch and a nap (I believe we called it “Bible Time Five”).  As Dave opened the actual solid wooden door out of the church, he hit this lady in the head.

“Oh, sorry,” Dave said quite apologetically.  The women smiled, appearing to be forgiving and very nice.  “That’s okay.  Is there something going on here for children this week?”  “Absolutely!” Dave said with much gusto  “Neighborhood Bible Time is happening here this week!  You should bring your daughter tomorrow morning!”  Dave said this while motioning to the 6 yr. old blond girl standing directly behind the  woman, “It’s a great time for kids.”

The woman continued while smiling, “Oh, yes, I was just wondering, Did someone burn a Bible in that meeting yesterday?”

In that one moment, everything became clear.  I knew I’d seen the little girl before, and I knew why I wasn’t supposed to show the Burning Bible magic trick to the young children.  Stupid Marty!  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Dave smiled trying to be funny, “Yes, maam, that’s what happened.”  I quickly interjected, “No maam, that was me, and that’s not what happened.  You see, I was doing a…

As I talked the woman lost her smile in between the words “I” and “was” and spoke quite loudly while taking a step back and pointing at me:  “I rebuke you, in the name of Jesus”.  A look of relief came out of her face as she walked away, grabbing the arm of the confused 6 yr old and back towards her car.

“Maam, I’d love to explain to you what happened if you have another minute,” I said, trying to save whatever bit of Christian fellowship I could with this woman.  As she continued to ignore me like I didn’t exist, I then resorted to a touch of sarcasm, “Ummm, maam, can we talk about this like mature Christians?”

At that, the woman flipped me off, called me an asshole, got in her car, and drove away.

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