The lectionary passages this week reassure us of God’s presence and care for us, even in the most difficult circumstances of life. The Acts text tells us that “we are God’s offspring,” and the Psalmist reminds us that God has not “removed his steadfast love from [us].” But John’s gospel puts it most plainly: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” In this installment of The Immediate Word, team member Mary Austin contemplates how those words can have great meaning for people who feel abandoned by the worldly powers that are ostensibly supposed to protect us. She highlights several instances in the headlines of families and communities struggling with immense grief who feel orphaned by their governments -- most notably, angry Turks who heckled the country’s prime minister over lax safety precautions that led to a disaster in which 301 miners died, and the distressed parents of more than 200 girls kidnapped from their Nigerian school by the militant Boko Haram group. When unimaginable sorrow and helplessness tear us apart and it feels like there’s no one in this world who can keep us safe -- that’s when it’s most important to remember John’s teaching that “we know [the Spirit of truth], because he abides in [us], and he will be in [us].” As Mary points out, no matter how lost and alone we may be feeling, we can take great comfort in the knowledge that God is always there with us. But she also asks us to consider how we can further God’s work in the world. How can we act as advocates for our fellow human beings who are also God’s children?
Team member Leah Lonsbury shares some additional thoughts on the contrast between the living God and the not-so-living deities that we all too often worship, which this week’s Acts text compares to idols of “gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.” As Leah notes, there are many things that we foolishly place our trust in -- money, power, physical beauty, youth, virility, athletic talent -- but all of these are part of the mortal world, and if we chase after them we are making the same mistake as the Athenians that Paul addresses. Instead our greatest priority ought to be finding communion with the Lord, who “is not far from each one of us” and “in [whom] we live and move and have our being.”
Feeling Like Orphans
by Mary Austin
John 14:15-21; Psalm 66:8-20
The video of the stolen Nigerian schoolgirls looked like a class photograph, with the girls arranged in rows as they posed for the picture. The familiarity of the scene was all the more heart-rending, knowing the unfamiliarity and terror they must be feeling. Invited to watch, the parents were moved to sobs and rage.
The scriptures for this week promise God’s care, even in unfamiliar times and circumstances. God will “not leave you orphaned,” Jesus promises, adding that even when the world can’t see him, people of faith will be able to. This promise is especially welcome as we pray for the families of Turkish miners, schoolgirls in Nigeria, and places of hurt closer to home. In times of devastation, how are we to look for -- and find -- the presence of God?
In the News
The #BringBackOurGirls effort on social media has kept the plight of the missing Nigerian schoolgirls in the public eye, but for all the pledges of international help, bringing them back to their families is difficult. The president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, recently cancelled a visit to the village where the girls were kidnapped, fearing for his own safety. According to the New York Times, a government official “said security could not be guaranteed in the village of Chibok, 80 miles from [the] state capital. The road passes through territory largely controlled by Boko Haram; villages along it bear the traces -- burned schools, empty houses -- of earlier Boko Haram attacks.” A video of the girls, released recently, both reassured and distressed their parents, who are angry about the government’s inability to help. For now, Boko Haram seems to be much more powerful than the government.
Unrest and anger at the government in Turkey have followed a mine accident where 301 miners died in a fire. Fourteen of the miners were from one small village of 400 people. For relatives, grieving their losses has also brought anger about the pace of modernization. As the New York Times reports: “The dominant narrative, for a time, was the swift ascent of Turkey on the global economic stage. With demand for energy to fuel the economic expansion soaring, coal became important, providing more opportunities to men in places like this. But there were losses too, of rural traditions, social cohesion -- and now lives.... Over the past decade the men, for generations farmers who grew tobacco, wheat, and barley, put down their pitchforks and found work in the nearby coal mines on the promise of more money and greater security in the form of health insurance and pensions.” With the deaths of so many miners, relatives are wondering where their security will be found now.
In South Sudan, civil war has uprooted people from their farms and fields, leaving them displaced and hungry. Thousands have died, and an estimated million people are displaced, without resources to feed themselves. As the New York Times reports, “officials warn that the tragedy could just be beginning. A serious food crisis is looming over the country, and the United Nations says that if action is not taken immediately, the consequences could be dire. ‘There is every likelihood that the worst food crisis in South Sudan’s history can happen,’ said Hilde Johnson, chief of the United Nations mission in South Sudan. ‘This can involve a famine of significant proportions.’... So many people have been displaced by the fighting that the planting season was disrupted, creating major concerns about the next harvest. Fishermen cannot work the rivers. Livestock have been lost and abandoned. Cholera has broken out in the capital, Juba, and threatens other parts of the country.”
There’s no shortage of stories about insecurity of heart and spirit, as our neighbors around the world grieve for loved ones and face a fearful future.
In the Scriptures
The scripture texts this week have a strong theme of God’s care and presence with us, even as the world around us is uncertain.
In John 14:15-21, we hear part of Jesus’ farewell conversation with his disciples. Preparing them for his physical absence, he reassures them of his enduring spiritual presence. He introduces the idea of the Holy Spirit as an Advocate for those who believe, assuring them that God will provide “another Advocate, to be with you forever” (v. 16). He adds, “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him” (v. 17a). The Advocate, the Spirit of truth, stands in contrast to the evil we find in the world. It exists and is at work, whether we see it or not.
Interestingly, Jesus promises that the Spirit is another Advocate, reminding us that we still have our original Advocate with God, Jesus himself. His work on our behalf continues. Karoline Lewis suggests on WorkingPreacher.org that this text is preparing us for Pentecost and the dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit to the church. It bridges the Easter season resurrection texts, connecting them with Pentecost and its look forward to the life of the church: “That this text is located in the Sundays after Easter promises that the presence and power of Jesus will extend beyond the empty tomb, beyond Easter, and well into this next season we call Pentecost. All too often, the resurrection is preached as a culmination rather than an inauguration, the ultimate believer’s reality rather than the penultimate promise, especially for the Gospel of John.” For those who may feel orphaned by the heart-rending loss of loved ones, or by the loss of home and security, Jesus promises that we are not alone, that we have an Advocate at work on our behalf.
The Psalmist has the same assurance. God, the Psalmist proclaims, “has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip” (Psalm 66:9). Still, there are trials in life, and no human life is without pain. Reflecting on this passage, John C. Holbert reminds us that this is not a promise for us as individuals, but for the community of God’s people. If we are mindful only of our own distress, we lose a key part of the message of the Psalm. Thinking only about ourselves, he says, “I lose something else of great value. I forget the very reason for praise in the first place. God is not to be praised merely because God has rescued me from my troubles, however difficult and painful I experienced them to be. No, God is in the very business of rescue and has been doing it from the foundation of the world.” Holbert adds, “If I stay away from the worshiping assembly, I too easily forget that God’s rescue is not just for me; God’s rescue is for all who cry out in praise. It is ‘we’ who have been rescued (vv. 8-12). Only after I can celebrate with all my brothers and sisters ‘our’ victories can I then turn to my own sense of salvation.” Reflecting the communal sense of worship for the people of Israel, the Psalm conveys the truth that our rescue is never complete until everyone is safe.
In the Sermon
Jesus’ promises never stand alone. Before assuring his friends, and us, about the presence of the Spirit, he says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). What commandments could be joined to this promise, we might wonder. Part of his reassurance is the reminder that “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). If he lives in us, and we in him, do we have a calling to be advocates for each other? The sermon might look at how we advocate for each other. Do we pray energetically for people whose stories we only know from the news? Petition our elected officials? Give money? Can we advocate for people closer to home? Are we advocates for fair wages when we choose the products we buy and the places we shop?
The sermon might also look at what else Jesus commands us to do as we take up his work and live in his spirit. What does it mean for our own times of distress if Jesus lives in us, and we in him? Is this about the life of the spirit and our own personal faith, or is it about practical matters like relationships, money, and work?
Or the sermon might look at places where this promise has been realized. Have we had experiences where we felt the power of God as our advocate? If we follow the urging of the Psalmist, “Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for me” (Psalm 66:16), what story do we have to share? Are there people in the congregation who have stories to share too?
The Psalmist suggests a journey through trial, being formed by experience, before we can praise God even more deeply. The sermon might look at how we are shaped by our painful experiences, and how they change our faith. How does our praise change when we emerge on the other side?
SECOND THOUGHTS
by Leah Lonsbury
Acts 17:21-31; John 14:15-21
You don’t have to look any further than the Yahoo! News Tech page to see that modern-day Americans aren’t really so different from the Athenians of Paul’s day. Here are some of this week’s headlines...
* This Bluetooth Bike Lock Brings Keyless Entry and Anti-Theft Notifications to Your Smartphone
* Did You Know That Facebook Had Keyboard Shortcuts? Here Are 21 Handy Ones
* Can Video Games Teach Your Child to Be a Better Person?
* A New Line of Clothing, Designed Especially for Websurfing
* Eating Healthier, with Gadgets and Apps
And my personal favorite, that must-read...
* The Untold Story of the “Tiny Hamsters Eating Tiny Burritos” Viral Video
How, you might ask, do these headlines connect us to ancient Athenians? We’ll need to back up our lectionary passage from Acts just one verse to start to see the link. Verse 21 reads: “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.”
Like Paul’s audience, we’re always chasing after the next big thing, and in that hot and single-minded pursuit for the new and the novel, we have a tendency to miss the One who is “not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27), the One “who made the world and everything in it” (v. 24).
Throwing ourselves headlong into that chase each day can mean we spend many precious moments of our lives watching videos about tiny hamsters and their tiny burritos, and very few moments being present and attending to the life we share with God, the one in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
Always chasing after what’s next can be tiring, consuming, distracting, unhealthy, and ultimately deadly. The Athenians raced and stretched themselves to cover the worship of every possible new-wave God -- gold, silver, stone, you name it. We do the same thing.
Their objects of worship consumed their resources, time, and energy. So do ours.
And, Paul would say, these “gods” were stealing their very lives by causing them to forget their source, their Creator, their life and breath. The same could be said of us.
When we seek to create gods to worship and follow beyond or besides the One in whom “we live and move and have our being,” we lose our sense of ourselves, our sense of what gives and sustains life, and our sense of what is truly valuable. When it comes to deities, it turns out that old and faithful trumps new and flashy, intimately close beats exotically other, and relational and interwoven outshines inanimate and easily controlled.
Our news cycle is full of stories of those who have traded the God of Life for the god of... just about anything else.
There are those who still worship the god of gold -- money -- and forget that we are all “offspring” of one Parent (Acts 17:28), the One who gives us breath and life together (Acts 17:25). This worship only serves to widen the gap of divine connection and threatens a growing number of lives.
There are those who still worship the god of silver -- technology -- and forget that our true Source, the One who powers both heaven and earth, does not live in the shrines we build with our hands, not even our iPhones. Turns out there is not an app for that.
There are those who still worship the god of stone -- rock-hard abs -- and forget that no matter how many miles are run, how many pounds are lifted and lost, or how many others we beat across the finish line, the Body takes its real shape and life and beauty from the One who lives in us and abides with us always (John 14:19-20). This kind of worship venerates the shrine (our bodies) and not the revelation of the divine love and life they hold (John 14:21).
When we chase these and numerous other gods instead of seeking communion with the one, true God who is already right here, within and between us, we put our trust and hope in fleeting images of our own creation (of our art and imagination -- Acts 17:29).
Perhaps the most novel thing we can do is shift our eyes and hearts from the Wall Street numbers, our smartphones, and the mirrors in the gym, and instead look within for the One who creates and holds and blesses our lives.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
Acts 17:22-31
The recently released Godzilla movie may startle audiences with its special effects and captivate them as the 355-foot-high creature storms San Francisco, but the truth of the original story of Godzilla (from a Japanese film produced in 1954) has been lost. The director of the new Godzilla film, Gareth Edwards, portrays the creature as a warrior fighting MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). But the original Godzilla emerged after atomic tests on South Pacific islands following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 1954 Godzilla was a terror to remind us of the horrors of nuclear bombs, a message lost on Gareth Edwards.
Application: Paul in his sermon had to remind people of the truth of Jesus and the falsehood of their beliefs.
*****
Acts 17:22-31
In a Frank & Ernest comic strip by Bob Thaves, the two motley characters are in a boat fishing on a lake. Frank looks over to his companion and says, “The problem with the sport of fishing is that the fish always have the home-field advantage.”
Application: As Paul began his sermon, he must have felt the worshipers in Athens had the home-field advantage; yet he persisted in being a fisher of men.
*****
Acts 17:22-31
The new stadium being built in Atlanta to replace Turner Field as the home for the Atlanta Braves baseball team will seat 41,500 people. Scheduled to open in 2017, the $672 million project is in suburban Cobb County and will be the hub of a “play, work, stay” destination. It will be a place for a major league stadium, restaurants, shops, businesses, and residential apartments. The development team said, “It will be the first of its kind: a new place that will simultaneously create a major sports venue and surrounding community, which will fit seamlessly together from the first pitch.”
Application: One can only wonder, especially on a sports Sunday, if this new complex will become an “unknown god.”
*****
John 14:15-21
In a speech at the dedication ceremony for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “It tells how in the aftermath of the attacks, our city, our nation, and the people across the world came together. This museum, more than any history book, will keep that spirit of unity alive.”
Application: The Holy Spirit is a spirit of unity for the church.
*****
1 Peter 3:13-22
Bill Parcells was inducted last August into the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- the first coach in seven years to be selected. During his induction speech, Parcells quoted former Giants defensive back Emlen Tunnell, who in 1967 was the first black man inducted into the Canton, Ohio shrine. During his induction speech Tunnell said -- and Parcells repeated -- “Losers assemble in little groups and complain about the coaches and players in other little groups. But winners assemble as a team.”
Application: Peter was speaking to those who were baptized, telling them to remember they were working as a team in their suffering to do good.
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From team member Chris Keating:
Acts 17:22-31
Religious in Every Way, Except in Church
Imagine the Apostle Paul standing in New York City’s Times Square today and declaring, “Americans! I see how religious you are in every way!” Given the vast sea of empty pews on Sunday, that hardly seems possible. But according to journalist and ministry coach Tom Ehrich, many Americans he meets are as faith-filled and faith-seeking as ever. They’re just not in church. In a recent Religion News Service column, Ehrich observed:
What people are losing is a desire to sit in a pew on Sunday morning. This cuts deep. Many church leaders remain stuck in a belief that Sunday worship is their reason for being. They keep hoping that when they open the doors next Sunday, magic will occur. When congregations look beyond Sunday, however, and beyond worship as primary activity, they are amazed at how responsive people are, even the generation supposedly known as “nones.”
The problem, says Ehrich, are church leaders who are afraid to try new ways of doing ministry, perhaps not unlike Paul’s adapting to circumstances he encountered in Athens. “But if congregations can embrace people, the needs they know, the tools they use, and the hungers they experience, and if they can get outside themselves, religion can have a great future. In many places, that future is already breaking in.”
*****
Acts 17:22-31
Quick, Paul, Take a Selfie! #athenians, #lookatme
Social media is flooded with selfies -- the often hastily snapped cellphone self-portraits found just about everywhere. Writer Donna Highfill wryly suggests that “if smartphones were ponds, a large portion of our population would have already drowned.” It’s fun, it’s common, but is it healthy? In extreme cases, it nearly becomes a form of self-worship.
Taking a selfie may be a humorous way of capturing the moment, but a British psychiatrist notes that a disproportionate amount of clients seeking treatment are compulsive selfie takers. According to psychiatrist Dr. David Veal: “Two out of three of all the patients who come to see me with Body Dysmorphic Disorder since the rise of camera phones have a compulsion to repeatedly take and post selfies on social media sites.”
For example, consider the case of a 19-year-old British man who tried to commit suicide after failing to take what he thought was the ultimate selfie. He was so obsessed with capturing the perfect image that he would spend up to 10 hours a day taking his own picture -- often taking up to 200 photographs a day. “I was constantly in search of taking the perfect selfie, and when I realized I couldn’t, I wanted to die. I lost my friends, my education, my health, and almost my life,” said Danny Bowman, who has since undergone extensive mental health treatment. Paul notes a similar trend toward self-absorption in the Athenians, whose search for meaning and purpose in life led to the construction of multiple places of worship. Paul calls them to look beyond themselves and to discover God’s life-giving presence, because it is “in God we live and move and have our being.”
*****
John 14:15-21
Orphans, Memorial Day, and the “Buddy Poppy”
For over 90 years, members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars have distributed red Buddy Poppies on Memorial Day. The trademarked flower is produced by disabled veterans, and has its roots in both remembering those who have died in war and providing for children orphaned during war. Tradition indicates that in 1915, Moina Michael of Georgia was moved by the John McCrae poem “In Flanders Fields.” In response, she wrote this verse:
We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
Michael began urging others to wear poppies in remembrance of veterans. Then a French woman visiting the United States picked up on Michael’s idea and embarked on a mission to sell poppies as a way of raising funds for children orphaned in Europe by World War I. In 1922, the VFW became the first American veterans’ organization to sell poppies, which still partially supports the VFW National Home for Children.
*****
John 14:15-21
Caring for Orphans in Syria Is Not Just a Job
Syrian children are taking the brunt of that nation’s ongoing humanitarian crisis. In early May, a spate of airstrikes and other attacks left scores of children dead or injured. It is becoming a routine occurrence. According to a UNICEF official:
“Every day, across Syria, children who are simply trying to go about their everyday lives are being killed and maimed by indiscriminate attacks on populated areas,” said Maria Calivis, the regional director of UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children, in a statement made amid the spike in attacks earlier in the week. “These attacks appear to be escalating, in complete disregard of all the calls that have been made to stop this insane cycle of violence, and to avoid similar breaches of international law.”
Thousands of children have migrated into other nations without their parents. The numbers are hard to comprehend. NBC documented the story of the care orphans in one refugee camp receive thanks to Maria Assi, the 45-year-old CEO of an UNICEF-affiliated nonprofit in Zahle, in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. According to Hayley Goldbach:
One year ago, 12-year-old Fatima came to the refugee camp with her mother from their home in Syria. Her father had died before the war. Then, three months ago, Fatima lost her mother during a severe winter storm. Volunteers at the camp say that she died of a pneumonia exacerbated by the frigid temperatures -- the family had no heating inside their tent. She had no older siblings or other family to care for her, so she ended up in the care of a half-brother -- who doesn’t want her.
Assi strives to model the sort of pledge Jesus makes to the disciples in John 14:18. She hears stories of agony and heartache every day. She tries her best and is committed to improving the lives of as many orphans as she can. “It’s not a job,” she says, “it’s my life.”
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From team member Dean Feldmeyer:
John 14:15-21
On the Outside Looking In
I always find myself here
On the outside, looking in;
Looking in on others’ lives
And love I’ll never win.
In all the things I’ve done
And places where I’ve been,
I’m always on the outside
Looking in.
My life’s been filled with loneliness
And emptiness and pain,
And every time I think I’ll win
It comes around again
To take away the sunshine
And leave me in the rain;
This cold and lonely life here
Filled with pain.
So do I quit looking and trying to show
How much I’m willing to give,
And do I quit trying to be in their lives
And keep to myself as I live?
Doubts that started small
Grow ever stronger now, it seems,
Shadowing my daylight hours
And creeping in my dreams.
When I was uninvited,
Or chosen last for teams,
The reasons grow more obvious
It seems.
Looking toward the future now,
I know not where it leads;
To loneliness and misery,
Or marvelous, great deeds.
I see there only things to fear
And empty, unfilled needs,
And no one there to take me
Where it leads.
So do I quit looking and trying to show
How much I’m willing to give,
And do I quit trying to be in their lives
And keep to myself as I live?
-- R.D. Clyde
*****
John 14:15-21
Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
*****
John 14:15-21
Loneliness and Human Nature
In their book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, authors John Cacioppo and William Patrick affirm that few things challenge our happiness more than loneliness. Using research they have done all over the United States, they challenge many of our assumptions and open new understandings to the destructive power of human estrangement and loneliness.
For instance, we might assume that being lonely would make people warmer, more eager for connection, and more accepting of differences in others. If you’re lonely, you’re going to be open to making friends and therefore more easygoing, right?
To the contrary! It turns out that being lonely has just the opposite effect:
-- Loneliness “sets us apart by making us more fragile, negative, and self-critical” (p. 174).
-- “When people feel lonely they are actually far less accepting of potential new friends than when they are socially contented” (p. 180).
-- “Lonely students have been shown to be less responsive to their classmates during class discussions, and to provide less appropriate and less effective feedback than non-lonely students” (p. 181).
-- “When people feel rejected or excluded they tend to become more aggressive, more self-defeating or self-destructive, less cooperative and helpful, and less prone simply to do the hard work of thinking clearly” (p. 217).
On the other hand, when people are well connected to other people through families, friendships, and even just recreational relationships, they tend to be happier, kinder, and more contented.
*****
John 14:15-21
Abandon Ship
When the HMS Birkenhead, a British ship carrying troops, began to sink off the coast of South Africa in 1852, the captain and military officers on board famously allowed women and children to board the lifeboats first.
The captain and many of the troops stayed on the ship until the last, perishing in the ocean as the women and children made their way to safety. Their chivalrous act of self-sacrifice is considered to have helped set the standard for noble conduct at sea.
But such bravery has been conspicuously absent from two major maritime disasters in recent times.
Capt. Lee Joon-seok of the Sewol, the South Korean ferry that recently sunk, has come under heavy criticism for abandoning the ship while hundreds of passengers remained on board. More than 250 people died in the accident, with dozens more still missing.
Lee’s actions have prompted comparisons to those of Capt. Francesco Schettino, who was in command of the cruise ship Costa Concordia which crashed into a reef off the Italian coast in 2012, killing 32 people.
Witnesses said Schettino jumped into a lifeboat to flee the ship, even though hundreds of passengers were still on board. In his trial, the captain said he fell into a lifeboat when the ship listed sharply. Schettino is now on trial on charges of manslaughter, causing a maritime disaster, and abandoning ship with passengers still on board. He denies wrongdoing.
The cases of the Sewol and the Costa Concordia have raised questions about a captain’s obligations to passengers when a vessel runs into trouble.
By leaving the Sewol soon after it began sinking, Lee reneged on some of his key duties, experts say.
“The captain’s first obligation is for the safety of his crew and passengers,” Capt. James Staples, a maritime consultant, told CNN. “He should stay on board that vessel until he knows everybody is safely evacuated. And then the other reason he stays on board the vessel is for salvage rights. For the captain to leave the vessel in an early situation, it’s not the way it should be done.”
An international maritime convention on the safety of life at sea makes a captain responsible for the vessel and all the people on board, but it doesn’t stipulate that the captain stay on the ship throughout the crisis. “You don’t necessarily want a captain dying with a ship. But he has a responsibility for the safety of everybody on board that ship,” said Cade Courtley, a former Navy SEAL and president and founder of SEAL Survival. “He’s got to be there and take care of that,” Courtley told CNN. “And this guy didn’t do that. He was one of the first off. I mean, that’s kind of unforgivable, basically.”
*****
John 14:15-21
Myths and Realities About Adoption
Nearly 81.5 million Americans have considered adopting a child. If just one in 500 of these adults adopted, every waiting child in foster care would have a permanent family. But foster care adoption (adopting a child from the foster care system) is often misunderstood, preventing children from finding forever families. From the Dave Thomas Foundation, here are some of the most common misconceptions and the reality behind each one.
Myth: Foster care adoption may cost less than private infant or international adoption, but it’s still expensive.
Reality: Foster care adoption normally costs little or nothing. Click here for more information on how much it costs to adopt.
Myth: A biological parent can come to take an adopted child back.
Reality: This is a fear for nearly half of the people considering adoption. However, biological parents have no way to gain back custody of the child or children once their parental rights are terminated.
Myth: Children enter foster care because they committed a crime.
Reality: This belief is held by 50 percent of Americans, but actually children enter U.S. foster care through no fault of their own. Usually they are victims of neglect, abandonment, or abuse.
Myth: A single parent can’t provide a healthy environment for an adopted child.
Reality: A single parent can provide a loving, stable home. In fact, as the number of two-parent families declines, an increasing number of children live in single-parent homes. In 2012, this number was 28 percent.
Myth: Same-sex parents are not capable of providing a healthy environment for an adoptive child.
Reality: Practically every valid study to date concludes children of same-sex parents adjust well and grow up in positive environments compared with heterosexual families.
Myth: No person over 55 can provide a healthy and loving environment for an adopted child.
Reality: This belief is held, erroneously, by 61 percent of Americans. In truth, almost one in four adopted children lives happily with an adoptive parent 55 years or older.
Unless stated otherwise, all statistics are from the National Foster Care Adoption Attitudes Survey, commissioned by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and conducted by Harris Interactive, June 2013.
*****
Acts 17:22-31
Weird Religion
When Paul visited Athens he noted the vast array of gods and goddesses that people worshiped as part of the Greek pantheon. One cannot but wonder how he might have responded to our 21st-century pantheon. Here are just a few of the strange minority religions that are alive and well in our culture.
Scientology
Scientologists believe that Xenu (sometimes Xemu) was an alien ruler of the “Galactic Confederacy.” Seventy-five million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes, and detonated hydrogen bombs in the volcanoes. The thetans then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today. Scientologists at advanced levels place considerable emphasis on isolating body thetans and neutralizing their ill effects.
Creativity
Creativity is a white separatist religion that was founded by Ben Klassen in early 1973 under the name Church of the Creator. After nearly expiring as a religion it was reborn as the New Church of the Creator, with Matthew F. Hale as its Pontifex Maximus (high priest) until his incarceration in January 2003 for plotting with the movement’s head of security, Anthony Evola (an FBI informant), to murder a federal judge.
The Nation of Yahweh
The Nation of Yahweh is a predominantly African-American religious group that is the most controversial offshoot of the Black Hebrew Israelites line of thought. They were founded in 1979 in Miami by Hulon Mitchell Jr., who went by the name Yahweh ben Yahweh. Their goal is to return African-Americans, whom they see as the original Israelites, to Israel. The group departs from mainstream Christianity and Judaism by accepting Yahweh ben Yahweh as the Son of God.
Church of All Worlds
The Church of All Worlds is a neo-pagan religion founded in 1962 by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart and his wife Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, who were in part inspired by a fictional religion of the same name in the science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. They recognize “Gaea,” the Earth Mother Goddess and the Father God, as well as the realm of Faeries and the deities of many other pantheons. Many of their ritual celebrations are centered on the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece.
Prince Philip Movement
The Prince Philip Movement began in Vanuatu and believes that Queen Elizabeth II’s husband -- Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh -- is a divine being, the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit and brother of John Frum. According to ancient tales the son traveled over the seas to a distant land, married a powerful lady, and would in time return.
The Church of Euthanasia
The Church of Euthanasia (CoE) is a political organization started in the Boston area by the Reverend Chris Korda. According to the church’s website, it is “a non-profit educational foundation devoted to restoring balance between humans and the remaining species on Earth.” The CoE uses sermons, music, culture jamming, publicity stunts, and direct action combined with an underlying sense of satire and black humor to highlight Earth’s unsustainable population.
Nuwaubianism
Nuwaubianism is an umbrella term used to refer to the doctrines and teachings of the followers of Dwight York, who is now in prison after having been convicted on money laundering and child molestation charges. Nuwaubianism draws on a wide range of sources which include New Age movements such as Astara as well as the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, the Moorish Science Temple of America, the revisionist Christianity & Islam and the Qadiani cult of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the numerology of Rashad Khalifa, and the ancient astronaut theories of Zecharia Sitchin. White people are said in one Nuwaubian myth to have been originally created as a race of killers to serve blacks as a slave army, but this plan went awry.
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of God’s praise be heard,
People: For it is our God who has not let our feet slip.
Leader: We will come into your house with our offerings.
People: We will pay our vows to you.
Leader: Come and hear and we will tell what God has done for us.
People: God has given heed to the words of our prayer.
OR
Leader: Come into the presence of the God who creates us.
People: We come to acknowledge God as our creator.
Leader: Come and sing praise to the God who loves us wholly.
People: We offer our voices of praise to our loving God.
Leader: Come and know that God’s love is everlasting.
People: We rejoice that God’s love is forever and ever.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
“O Love, How Deep”
found in:
UMH: 267
H82: 448, 449
PH: 83
NCH: 209
LBW: 88
ELA: 322
W&P: 244
“Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”
found in:
UMH: 384
H82: 657
PH: 376
AAHH: 440
NNBH: 65
NCH: 43
CH: 517
LBW: 315
ELA: 631
W&P: 358
AMEC: 455
Renew: 196
“O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go”
found in:
UMH: 480
PH: 384
NNBH: 210
NCH: 485
CH: 540
LBW: 324
AMEC: 302
“God, Whose Love Is Reigning O’er Us”
found in:
UMH: 100
“Lord, I Want to Be a Christian” (verse 2)
found in:
UMH: 402
PH: 372
AAHH: 463
NNBH: 156
NCH: 454
CH: 589
W&P: 457
AMEC: 282
Renew: 145
“The Gift of Love”
found in:
UMH: 408
AAHH: 522
CH: 326
W&P: 397
Renew: 155
“Thou Hidden Love of God”
found in:
UMH: 414
“I Love You, Lord”
found in:
CCB: 14
Renew: 36
“Your Loving Kindness Is Better Than Life”
found in:
CCB: 26
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who calls us your own dear children: Grant us the wisdom to know you as a loving parent
and to see one another as sisters and brothers; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, for your love which draws us closer to you than we are to those who give birth to us. Help us to trust that your love will never fail us, and help us to share that love with others. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially our failure to trust in your compassionate love for us.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have tried to make you into our image instead of allowing your image to develop fully in us. We cast you in the role of fickle lover because our love is not constant. We think you will forget us because we have felt forgotten by others. We have abandoned others, and we fear being left by you. Forgive our foolish ways, and help us to trust you and your love. Amen.
Leader: God will never desert us or turn away from us. God’s love and forgiveness are always ours.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord’s Prayer)
We worship and adore you, O God, our creator who holds us in loving arms.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have tried to make you into our image instead of allowing your image to develop fully in us. We cast you in the role of fickle lover because our love is not constant. We think you will forget us because we have felt forgotten by others. We have abandoned others, and we fear being left by you. Forgive our foolish ways, and help us to trust you and your love.
We give you thanks for all the blessings you have bestowed upon us. We thank you for life and for your love. We thank you for those who allow your love to flow through them to us.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all who are in need, and especially this day for those who feel as if they are not or cannot be loved. Help us to be your physical presence that assures others that your love is abundant for us all.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father . . . Amen.
(or if the Lord’s Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
Talk to the children about how there are some children who do not have parents that can take care of them -- they are orphans. Sometimes we talk about God as our parent. We often pray to God as our Father. But God will never die and leave us as orphans, nor will God ever go away and leave us alone. God will always be our loving parent.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
We Are Not Alone
John 14:15-21
Object: an empty paper bag
Does anyone remember the name of the season right before Easter? We finished it a few weeks ago. (See if any of the children remember.) Lent! That’s right! During Lent we spent our time getting ready for the season of Easter. Now it’s time to get ready for the next season -- the season that comes after Easter. The next season begins in two weeks, but today’s lesson is getting us ready for it.
After Jesus was raised from the dead, the disciples were all very happy to have more time with him. They didn’t want to be without him, even though they knew that he wouldn’t stay with them forever. When it was time for Jesus to return to heaven to be with God, he began preparing his disciples to say goodbye. The disciples were scared. They couldn’t imagine a world without Jesus in it. They didn’t want to be left alone.
Jesus tells them not to worry because they won’t be alone. God will send another friend to be with them. The new friend, the Holy Spirit, will stay with them, guide them, and comfort them forever.
I often bring something to show you. Today I have a bag. Can anyone guess what’s in it? (Let the children guess.) Actually, there’s nothing in it -- but here’s why: the Holy Spirit is the presence of God inside of us. It’s not something we can see, but it is something we can feel. So I didn’t put anything in my bag to see. But we can talk to God within us.
Jesus told his followers that he would always be with them -- just in a different way, the way we call the Holy Spirit.
Today’s reading gives us a peek at what we’ll be celebrating in a couple of weeks. On the day of Pentecost we will celebrate the gift of God’s Holy Spirit to the world.
Prayer: Father, thank you for reminding us that we are never alone. Help us to be brave and to know that you are with us -- even when it seems hard to see you. Amen.
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The Immediate Word, May 25, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
