Hear the Voices of Peoples Long Silenced
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For July 26, 2020:
Hear the Voices of Peoples Long Silenced
by Tom Willadsen
Genesis 29:15-28
In the News
The topics getting the most attention in the media this week are the contention over mask-wearing — whether a governor has the authority to require it, or to forbid a municipality from requiring it — and whether to open public schools at the historic beginning of the academic year in August or early September.
President Trump has taken a very strong stand, urging, demanding even, that schools re-open for in-person instruction this fall.
The President has threatened to withhold federal education funds from districts that do not accede to his wishes. It appears that President Trump does not have a clear grasp of the role the executive branch of the federal government plays in education. Only about 6% of a typical school district’s budget comes from the federal government. Specifically, federal education dollars support school lunch programs, special education and Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title I dollars are intended to support schools with poverty rates of 40% or more. Since 1965, changes in the law allow private schools to access federal money for some of the services they offer.
“The science should not stand in the way of this,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, July 16, 2020. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany again pushed the Trump administration position Thursday that all schools should reopen in the fall, despite a surge in virus cases and hospitalizations.
“We don’t think our children should be locked up at home with devastating consequences when it’s perfectly safe for them to go to school,” McEnany said at the White House press briefing.
The conundrum is described concisely in this news story from NPR, July 17, 2020:
Parents, teachers and school officials face an agonizing choice in the next few weeks — how, if at all, do they send their kids back to school? To them, it's a decision about public health and about the kids who are closest to them. The president alleges the decision is really about him. He's urging schools to open and criticizing his own administration's guidelines for opening safely and claiming without evidence that governors and school leaders want to keep schools shut to hurt him.
The vast majority of teachers believe that classroom learning is far superior to distance or “hybrid” instruction. Still, many believe their needs are not being considered in the push to get students back in schools for full day instruction. Many of their reservations are clearly expressed in this piece from CNN.
An often-overlooked factor that made the spring’s sudden switch to remote learning in many communities less stressful was that teachers had already established relationships with their students dating from the fall. Remote learning without that foundation, they contend, will be much more difficult.
The question of whether and how to reopen schools shows bitter division along party lines. The President contends those seeking to keep schools from fully reopening are doing so to hurt him politically. Senator John Kennedy (R-La) brought the rhetoric to new lows when he said on Fox News, Monday, July 13, that those who oppose schools reopening can “kiss my ass.” He added "America's going through a rough patch right now. Some people seem to be enjoying it. Maybe they just hate America. Maybe they just enjoy watching the world burn. I think some are liking the chaos because they think it gives them a political advantage. Part of that chaos is caused by school's closing. For our kids, we need to open them," Kennedy said.
"There are some people who want to keep our schools closed because they think it gives them a political advantage. They are using our kids as political pawns,” Kennedy said. (Put a pin in that term, “pawns.”)
Teachers’ perspectives need to be part of this discussion. A good summary of the many reasons why throwing the doors of our schools open this fall is unwise can be found here: “Hell No to the Hybrid Model,” by Christine Vaccaro, blog accessed at badassteachers.org, July 16, 2020. A single paragraph will expose a few of these issues.
The quixotic logic of a classroom return is obvious to teachers. It is almost inconceivable to imagine the necessary precautions being implemented broadly, fairly and successfully amongst schools and zip codes. High risk factors for COVID are embedded lifestyles for many: immunodeficiencies, obesity, asthma, diabetes, pregnancy, high blood pressure — if you mentally scan your faculty for these issues you would likely be left with a skeleton crew. It is not safe for them to be there, nor fair for those who are healthy to be reporting to duty, either. And of course, opened classrooms not only endanger students, but make them a tiny army of potential virus spreaders.
Public opinion polls vary, but generally they show a majority of parents unwilling to begin full time, in-person instruction in the fall. The broadly hinted at, though rarely articulated, belief of many is that the purpose of public schools is to provide supervision for children, so their parents can work. Thus the schools are essential to the full functioning of the economy. Since many believe that President Trump’s reelection requires a strong economy, the push to re-open schools is seen as crass politics, showing a willingness to sacrifice children (and teachers, administrators and support staff) for four more years.
Finally, often overlooked is the number of non-teachers whose health and safety may be more at-risk to exposure to Covid-19 than those in the classroom: bus drivers, food service workers and custodians, for example. Are their voices being listened for?
In the Bible
In 1971 when I first heard this story in second grade Sunday school in Peoria, Illinois, the teacher made it clear that Jacob had to work seven years for Rachel, but got Leah in a bait-and-switch (I’m sure Mrs. Goffner didn’t use that term.) then got to marry Rachel after just one week — and a promise to work seven more years. It wasn’t like Jacob had to wait another seven years to marry the sister he preferred. We got that settled.
(I have no recollection of what she made of “Give me my wife that I may go into her,” which is perhaps for the best. My therapist says I have enough stuff to deal with as it is.)
My first encounter with the story came when I had lived as long as Jacob’s first term of service. What did I know of marriage? Of Jacob’s preference for the “beautiful and lovely” one over the one with weak eyes? Of marriage feasts and veils? The only wedding I had ever been to at that time was Uncle Steve’s and my only memory was the paper breaking around the little packet of rice I would have gotten to throw and him and his bride if I just could have settled down and not tossed it playfully between my hands. I had only myself to blame, mom pointed out as the rice fell around my freshly polished oxfords.
The whole “tricking the trickster” angle was really the point. Here was Jacob who tricked his brother and father out of the status of being first born having to marry another whole woman because in Laban’s land one did not avoid the significance of birth order — that was the point. The trickster got outsmarted, get it?
“Mrs. Goffner, what was that veil made of?” remained unanswered. It must have been close to opaque. The possibility that Jacob may have been, shall we say, impaired, was off the table.
Fifty years later this story comes up on the lectionary and I’m struck by what isn’t there. Leah and Rachel have no agency. They do not even speak; they are given as compensation. The marriages were business transactions in which Leah and Rachel were the equivalent of money. We only viewed the story through Jacob’s eyes. He had every reason to be angry, to feel cheated, but maybe he also recognized that he’d been played as he himself had played his brother. Leah, Rachel and their maids Zilpah and Bilhah, had no agency; they were pawns in a chess game the men were playing. I wonder why the girls in my Sunday school class, or Mrs. Goffner, a former girl, did not point that out.
In the Sermon
Pawn, n. a person or thing manipulated and used by others… A person unwittingly used in a scheme and taken advantage of by others is an example of a pawn.
The rhetoric this week has been fascinating. Both sides of the school reopening debate accuse the other of using school children as pawns. The pawns are either having their health sacrificed by a poorly-coordinated reopening of schools, or their current social well-being and future socialization sacrificed by keeping the schools closed. There is no doubt that there are costs associated with keeping kids out of school. Remote learning is a poor substitute for what we have grown accustomed to. And while there have been no nationwide surveys of elementary school students on school reopening, numerous stories make a strong anecdotal case for their deep desire to return to the classroom environment they were exiled from in March. It is very likely that we will not be able to return to the pre-Covid Age of Education, but it’s what we know — what felt like home.
The students’ situation is analogous to that of Leah and Rachel and Zilpah and Bilhah. They have no agency and people who have much more power determine what their fate will be. Is this really the world we want to live in? If not, what can we make of the Bible’s cavalier omission of the thoughts, opinion and feelings of more than half the characters in this morning’s Hebrew scripture lesson?
It will take a new paradigm, a new set of eyes — or ears — to hear the voices of peoples long silenced. That phrase may resonate with Presbyterians. In the Brief Statement of Faith, added to The Book of Confessions in 1991, one of the things the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to do is to “hear the voices of peoples long silenced.” There is a lot of that going around these days. White people are really listening to the experiences of marginalized people. There are Black Lives Matter demonstrations in places like Red Oak, Iowa and Oconto, Wisconsin, communities with very few black people. It will take effort, and as a preacher it will require creativity or something like it, to give voice to the four silent women, but that’s a good place to start.
SECOND THOUGHTS
I Hug, Therefore I Am
by Dean Feldmeyer
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
In the News
Karina Montgomery is a 50-year-old events assistant for San Diego County, California. She lives in San Diego with her cat, Tobias, and is active in community theater.
Back in March, when the quarantine was self-imposed, she followed it rigorously, leaving her apartment only to pick up groceries. After two weeks, she says, she was ready to pay $50 for a 2-minute hug. Even after California gradually started reopening in May, she remained vigilant — “horrified at the maskless throngs she’d seen flocking to the beaches and congregating downtown.”
All in all, her isolation lasted 106 days. Finally, after three months of being alone (sorry, Tobias), she was eager to see some friends and get that hug she so desperately needed. But she wanted to do it as safely as possible and there aren’t any CDC or government guidelines for how to safely touch another human being whom you love.
In an article for the Washington Post, Montgomery sets down an oral history of how one woman sought to once again make that much needed physical contact with others. The article concludes with this paragraph.
“I asked Jonathan: “Could you just lay your hands at the base of my neck, top of my shoulder?” Ohmygod, it was warm and heavy, and I could lay my cheek on his hand for a second if I wanted to. Just the presence of a person touching in an intentional and loving way was so sweet and so generous and so simple. I still feel like the world is crazy. But individually, I felt better. I felt like I existed.”
Mary Daniel is the founder and CEO of ClaimMedic, a small company in Jacksonville, Florida, that helps patients with health-care bills. Her husband, Steve, has Alzheimer’s Disease and, since March 10th, has live in a nursing home memory care unit. The day after she signed him into the unit, she received a call telling her that, per state mandate, she would not be allowed to visit him.
Before Coronavirus invaded, she was there every evening to chat with him, get him ready for bed and lay with him for a couple of hours until he fell asleep. Now all she could do is stand outside his window and wave at him, which, inevitably, left him in tears.
This went on for three months and, then, one day, Mary saw an ad that said the nursing home was looking for help and she applied. She got the job. Now, CEO Mary washes dishes three days a week in the facility’s kitchen and, then, she gets to spend some precious hours in actual physical contact with her husband.
Not until we weren’t allowed to touch each other did many of us realize just how important that touch can be. Indeed, as Karina Montgomery so beautifully puts it, “I felt like I existed.” It is in human touch that many of us are authenticated and affirmed. In the time of Coronavirus, the people of God are called to find and share comfort from spiritual sources that touch not just our skin, but our souls as well.
In the Scripture
My colleague and fellow TIW writer, Rev. Tom Willadsen recently said, “I don’t think I’ve ever conducted a funeral that I didn’t read from Romans 8.” And most of us would concur.
This chapter, often artfully redacted for use in funeral liturgies, is full of affirmations and promises that ease our pain and fill the void that is left in our souls when we lose one whom we love. The last paragraph of the passage under consideration for today offers comfort for those who find themselves in the midst of separation and estrangement whether it comes voluntarily or involuntarily.
We might be separated from ones we love — physically, emotionally, mentally, whatever — but we are never separated from God. Indeed, there is nothing, nothing that can separate us from God’s love. Not death (the big separator) or life, not the rulers of heaven or the rulers of earth, not the problems and vicissitudes of the present or the future, not powers of any kind (political, military, religious, etc.), not even mountains or valleys — literal or symbolic.
None of these, no, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We would do well to ponder that statement in all of its concrete specificity because our inclination is, generally, to seek loopholes in it so that we can count ourselves in and others out.
Like, doesn’t that part about “…in Christ Jesus our Lord,” mean that this applies only to Christians? Doesn’t that give us permission to count others out? Too bad; nice to be me; sucks to be you! Well, it might until we re-examine the gospels and discover that Jesus, himself, did not limit his saving grace to those who were approved by the religious legalists of his time and those who followed him, but included Samaritans, women, Centurions, church leaders, children, beggars, the disabled, lepers, outcasts and forgotten people of all kinds.
So, see, when Paul says “nothing,” what he really means is “NOTHING!”
This is radical inclusivity, dangerous inclusivity, extravagant, even wasteful inclusivity and it’s not up to us. God has already included everyone under that divine umbrella of love. We can get on board with that or we can find ourselves on the outside looking in, not because God has excluded us but because we have excluded ourselves.
In the Sermon
Once they told me I couldn’t touch my face it was like my hands and face became the Romeo and Juliet of my body. They couldn’t stay away from each other. They simply had to be together, touching, caressing, embracing each other all the time. I never realized how many places there are on my face that itched and needed scratching or rubbing. It was driving me nuts!
And, if not being able to touch my own face was this vexing, how much more so not being able to touch the people I love, my children, my grandchildren, my friends. The frustration is nearly palpable and, I suspect, it is for everyone. There is a ubiquitous exasperation in the country and it is, I suspect, at least part of what is fueling those angry anti-mask, anti-social distancing, anti-regulation of any kind demonstrations.
But, like it or not, the time of Coronavirus is the time of social distancing. We are told by the leading scientific minds in the world that wearing masks and staying at least six feet away from each other is the surest way to save lives and defeat this horrible disease. But it hurts.
We long to touch and be touched by others. We yearn for the laying on of hands.
Then, into the midst of our pain, into the middle of our Corona infested world walks Saint Paul with these beautiful words of comfort and assurance.
We may be physically separated from each other, we may be physically separated from our houses of worship, but we need not be, indeed, we cannot be separated from the Lord our God. And, as we model our lives after the life of God’s son, we are reminded that we live not just in the physical realm but in a spiritual realm as well, a realm wherein nothing can separate us from God…or each other.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:
Genesis 29:15-28
Silent characters
There are four women named in Genesis 29:15-28, and two men. While it is the men’s voices that are heard, it is the women whose lives bear the promises of this story. Laben’s daughters are the focus of most of the story’s action, though the realities of patriarchalism mean they are kept silent. Two other women, Zilpah and Bilhah, are maids given to each of Laben’s daughter. They also do not speak, but still they are named. It is perhaps a reminder of how Israel’s story was often passed by generations of silent servants.
Zilphah and Bilhah, and even Rachel and Leah, would understand the dilemma’s faced by many of their contemporary sisters. For example, thousands of women (and men) laid off during Covid-19 will soon see their unemployment benefits expire. In Oklahoma last week, the state’s beleaguered unemployment commission held a “mega processing” event in order to help thousands of individuals snagged by delays in processing unemployment claims. Many of the stalled claims are stuck in the state’s mainframe computer that dates to 1978.
Ashley Love, a former Enterprise Rent-a-Car employee, made sure she was up by 4 a.m. to drop off her daughter before heading to the mega event. Laid off in March, Love’s benefits inexplicably stopped four weeks ago. When she arrived at the convention center, officials told her to come back the next day. “It’s appalling,” Love said. “I don’t understand how they can do this to people,” Love said. “One day, I called 15 times in two hours, and they either don’t answer or take your calls and hang up on you.”
* * *
Genesis 29:15-28
Jacob’s love for Rachel
Jacob and Rachel’s love story is one for the ages. But the stress they endured could have created significant stress. Sociologists and marriage researchers are wondering about the impact of stay-at-home orders on marriage. Power couples used to long commutes and business travel find themselves sharing a couch and negotiating wifi bandwidth. One marriage researcher suggests this could be a “make-or-break moment” for many couples.
“As my colleagues across the social sciences and I shared in a recent review of relevant research,” writes Eli Finkel, author of The All or Nothing Marriage. “Covid-19 requires large-scale behavior changes that pose significant psychological burdens. Those burdens descend upon each partner individually, with quarantine linked to feelings of confusion and anger, and they change the dynamic within the couple.”
Stressors accompanying Covid-19 could include job losses, parenting and forced togetherness. But Finkel notes some couples may benefit from these unique circumstances. Finkel says that there are ways of thriving in these moments of forced isolation.
“The key is to recalibrate expectations of what the relationship can realistically provide under the circumstances. By lowering unrealistic expectations, couples can keep difficulties from growing into a full-blown relationship crisis. But by holding onto certain important expectations — rather than expecting nothing at all — couples can use the forced isolation together to play to their strengths, perhaps even growing closer.”
* * *
Genesis 29:15-28
The Chicks Speak Out
Singers Natalie Maines, and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer are no strangers to speaking out. The women, formerly known as “The Dixie Chicks,” most recently dropped “Dixie” from their Grammy-winning name as a way of protesting global racial inequity. Maguire called it a “stupid name” picked when the girls were teenagers. “We wanted to change it years and years ago. I just wanted to separate myself from people who wave that Dixie flag,” Maguire told the New York Times.
Their latest album addresses a wide-array of social issues including gun control, climate change, abortion, and the Black Lives Matter movement. The song, “March March” includes the line, “If your voice held no power, they wouldn’t try to silence you.”
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Helped in weakness
The movie “Harriet,” released in 2019 and available on HBO this month, is a compelling biopic about Harriet Tubman and her courageous rescuing of more than 70 slaves. The story clearly communicates Tubman’s deep understanding that nothing could separate her from the presence of God. Tubman’s inner sense of call and conviction that God was using her to fight for freedom is evident through her daring efforts. Tubman received a brain injury and nearly died when a white man struck her with a two-pound lead weight. Despite her injury and her small stature, Tubman raced through more than 100 miles of wilderness to gain freedom. Returning to the plantation where she had been a slave, Tubman stands in the darkness and sings, “Go, Down, Moses.” As she sings, slaves begin emerging, responding with “Let my people go.”
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Neither death, nor life, nor lack of PPE shall separate us from the love of God
Chaplain Rocky Walker tells reporters that facing death in New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital has him fighting for his life more than when he was a soldier in the Gulf War.
"It was very scary, very dangerous," he says. "Working in the ICUs and seeing all that suffering and seeing families being decimated by this thing: I didn't see that in combat, I saw it first-hand here."
Chaplains at Mount Sinai carried messages from families to hospitalized loved ones. They entered spaces families were not allowed to go, trying to connect with dying patients despite being robed with layers of PPE. Walker would often hold up an iPhone or iPad to allow families to Facetime with each other. As Walker says, “in a room that’s lonely, we’re never alone.”
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
What are we to say to these things? (Hint: wear a mask)
In the height of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City, senior paramedic and firefighter Anthony Almojera recounted the “toughest day” of his career to a BBC journalist. The account reads like a script for an action movie — except it is all true.
He explains that the NYFD typically responds to 4,000 calls daily. This spring the number ticked up to 6,500 a day – a number similar to 9/11.
Almojera narrates showing up for the start of his shift at a Brooklyn firehouse at 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning:
I put on my uniform, grab my radio and start the process of decontaminating my equipment. We have to wipe down all the radios, keys, trucks, bags and the rest of the gear. This virus can stay alive on everything. Nothing is safe — even your co-workers.
In wars you see the bullet, you know who your enemy is. This is a war with an invisible bullet — everyone you come into contact with is a bullet who could get you.
I log on that morning at 06:02. I'm able to go get a bite to eat at the bagel shop. I start to hear the radio get busy around 07:00. We have already had more than 1,500 calls since midnight. I get called for the assignment — a cardiac arrest.
We arrive at the house and I put on my mask, gown and gloves.
We find a man. His family says he has had a fever and cough for five days. We start CPR and I watch the medics pass a tube down his throat to breathe for him and the IV gets started.
We work on him for about 30 minutes before we pronounce him dead. I make sure the crews are OK and get back in my truck — decontaminating everything first. I hit the button to go available.
Twenty minutes later, I get another cardiac arrest. Same symptoms, same procedures, same results. This virus attacks the lungs: you can't get enough oxygen into your system, then other systems start to shut down and then organ failure.
We hit the button, get another one.
Hit the button after that, get another one.
There's only one patient we've seen so far who I feel wasn't Covid-19 and that's because it was a suicide. Imagine: I was there and my brain felt relief. This person's dead and it's a suicide. I felt relief that it was a regular job.
It is now around 11:00 and I've done about six cardiac arrests.
In normal times, a medic gets two or three in a week, maybe. You can have a busy day sometimes, but never this. Never this.
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:
1 Kings 3:5-12
Wisdom from Others
When Solomon asks God for the gift of wisdom, he has the sense that there is something outside himself that will make him a more faithful king. He says to God, “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” He already knows that his wisdom will benefit the people of Israel. God praises him for this choice, which moves beyond his own personal gain. Sociologist Nicholas Christakis, who runs the Human Nature Lab at Yale, says that this kind of wisdom is unique to human beings. We can learn from each other’s experiences in a way that no other mammals can. He says, if “you put your hand in the fire, and you learn that it burns, so you’ve acquired some knowledge at some price. Or I can watch you put your hand in the fire, and I get almost as much knowledge for none of the price, which is really super-efficient. Or, I observe you eat red berries, and you die. And so now I’ve learned something at no cost; it’s amazing.”
We take it another step, and “we do something even more than that. We copy each other. We imitate each other. We learn from each other, which is rare in the animal kingdom, although it happens. We teach each other things. We set out to teach you how to build a fire. And this is exceedingly rare, but it’s universal in us. And so these are some very positive, amazing qualities that are shaped by natural selection, are encoded in our genes and are universal in humans and that are good and that serve to countermand some of our vile propensities, which, alas, we also have.”
Wisdom itself is a gift to human kind, and the wisdom each of us has goes on to enrich others. Solomon is already wise enough to ask for the right gift from God.
* * *
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
The Kingdom of Heaven
The realm of God is like a treasure hidden in a field, Jesus says, which requires a person to make a choice to seek it out. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it,” Jesus uses these images of finding something hidden to evoke the realm of God. The kingdom of heaven is also like a couch, bought by three roommates in New Paltz, NY at Goodwill.
They brought the couch home and then “Reese Werkhoven, Cally Guasti and Lara Russo realized that the lumps in their couch's pillows were actually envelopes stuffed with money. Just two months earlier, they'd bought the couch for $20 at a Salvation Army store…They kept finding more envelopes in the couch, pulling money out of it like an upholstered ATM.
Werkhoven added, "The most money I'd ever found in a couch was like 50 cents. Honestly, I'd be ecstatic to find just $5 in a couch." The discovery was like a dream for the three friends, all of whom are either in college or recent graduates. As they counted the money, they talked about what they might do with it; Werkhoven says he wanted to buy his mom a new car. But then they spotted a name among the envelopes, and realized they were faced with an ethical puzzle.”
The kingdom of heaven requires hard choices. “They asked their parents for advice; don't spend the money, they were told. A phone number led them to the family that had donated the couch — and to answers about why it was full of money. The roommates drove to the woman's house in what The Little Rebellion calls "a rustic home in a rough neighborhood." "I think the part of this whole experience that cleared away my prior thoughts and worries was when I saw the woman's daughter and granddaughter greet us at the door," Werkhoven tells the blog. "I could just tell right away that these were nice people." It turned out that the money was socked away out of the woman's late husband's concerns that he wouldn't always be there for his wife (she has chosen to remain anonymous). It represented decades of savings, including wages from the woman's job as a florist. For years, she also slept on the couch. But recent back problems led her daughter and son-in-law to replace it with a bed, meaning that the couch had to go. "This was her life savings and she actually said something really beautiful, like 'This is my husband looking down on me and this was supposed to happen,' " Guasti said…”
The kingdom of heaven is about treasure found, and the treasure may be the gift of serving and making a connection, more than the treasure itself.
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Prayer is the Hardest Virtue
“We do not know how to pray as we ought,” Paul writes to the faithful in Rome, and many contemporary people would agree with him. Theologian Roberta Bondi tells a story about the desert fathers and mothers, and their view of prayer. “One of the Abbas was asked one time which was the most difficult virtue to acquire. He went through the whole list of one virtue after another and then he concluded by saying, “But prayer is the hardest of the virtues because prayer is warfare to the last breath.” In prayer, we are likely, and it’s certainly what we want, to see ourselves as we really are. We can’t expect that we are going to be healed of the deep wounds of our heart without seeing what those wounds are. It’s also not a peaceful activity when we discover or come face to face with the reality of the world.” The Spirit, thankfully, is praying with and for us, embracing and amplifying our efforts.
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Learning to Pray
Roberta Bondi, a professor emeritus at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, made an academic study of the desert fathers and mothers, the abbas and ammas. To her surprise, they also taught her how to pray. One day, her husband was late coming home, as he often was in those days. She recalls, “I was sitting there on the couch and all of a sudden the Abbas from the ancient desert started saying to me, “Roberta, Roberta, we have something to say to you.” And I said, “Shut up and leave me alone. I’m worrying.” And they said, “Oh, oh, no. Come on, now. Come on, listen.” “Shh, shh, I’m worrying. Leave me alone.” And finally I said, “All right. All right. What do you have to say?” And they said to me, “Well, now, you know that the main thing we’re doing out here in the desert is prayer, and you have spent a lot of time studying us and working on us, and you might consider whether this might be something for you.” And I said to them, “Oh, come on, now. Look, I am a rational, reasonable woman, and I’m an academic, and this is, what you’re suggesting, just is not really for me.” And the answer to that was, “Ho, ho, ho, you might also consider as part of this that you have put Richard into the place of God for you. You know how we say that no one or no thing can fill that hole in your life except God, that your identity rests only in God, and that all other loves come out of that, and that no human being can ever fill that. Of course you feel the way you do.” So I was very embarrassed, because I knew, of course, instantly that they were right. So I said, “OK. All right. All right. I’ll try it.”
So, well, first, I let Richard come home and then yelled at him a little bit. And then I went out and got a book that had a pattern of prayer in it that was similar to what was used in the early church, and that was what started me on my discipline of prayer. And I can say several things that I learned out of that, that I like to share with others, and one of the things is you don’t need any kind of noble reason or highfalutin or serious reason. Any reason to begin a pattern of prayer is a good reason because prayer is about everyday life. It isn’t the great spiritual, the mystery that is too high and lofty for the likes of us.”
She adds, about prayer, “the fact is, if prayer is our end of a relationship with God, that’s not the way we are with the people we love a large portion of the time. We simply are in their presence. We’re going about our lives at the same time in each other’s presence, aware and sustained by each other, but not much more than that.” The Spirit intercedes for us, praying as we pray, adding to the relationship.
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: O give thanks to God, call on God’s name.
People: We will make known God’s deeds among the peoples.
Leader: Glory in God’s holy name and let your hearts rejoice.
People: We will seek God and God’s presence continually.
Leader: Remember the wonderful works God has done.
People: This is our God whose judgments are in all the earth.
OR
Leader: God who is always with us is with us still.
People: We rejoice in God’s constant presence of love.
Leader: When others ignore us or misuse us, God is with us.
People: Thanks be to our everloving God.
Leader: Rejoice in God’s love by sharing it with others.
People: We will serve God by loving all of God’s children.
Hymns and Songs:
Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
UMH: 103
H82: 423
PH: 263
NCH: 1
CH: 66
LBW: 526
ELW: 834
W&P: 48
AMEC: 71
STLT: 273
Renew: 46
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
UMH: 110
H82: 687/688
PH: 260
AAHH: 124
NNBH: 37
NCH: 439/440
CH: 65
LBW: 228/229
ELW: 503/504/505
W&P: 588
AMEC: 54
STLT: 200
The God of Abraham Praise
UMH: 116
H82: 401
NCH: 24
CH: 24
LBW: 544
ELW: 831
W&P: 16
Renew: 51
O God, Our Help in Ages Past
UMH: 117
H82: 680:
AAHH: 170
NNBH: 46
NCH: 25
CH: 67
LBW: 320
ELW: 632
W&P: 84
AMEC: 61
STLT: 281
Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah
UMH: 127
H82: 690
PH: 281
AAHH: 138/139/140
NNBH: 232
NCH: 18/19
CH: 622
LBW: 343
ELW: 618
W&P: 501
AMEC: 52/53/65
My Soul Gives Glory to My God
UMH: 198
CH: 130
ELW: 882
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life
UMH: 427
H82: 609
PH: 408
NCH: 543
CH: 665
LBW: 429
ELW: 719
W&P: 591
AMEC: 561
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
UMH: 430
H82: 659/660
PH: 357
NNBH: 445
NCH: 503
CH: 602
LBW: 492
ELW: 818
W&P: 589
AMEC: 299
Be Thou My Vision
UMH: 451
H82: 488
PH: 339
NCH: 451
CH: 595
ELW: 793
W&P: 502
AMEC: 281
STLT: 20
Renew: 151
I Will Call upon the Lord
CCB: 9
Renew: 15
Sing unto the Lord a New Song
CCB: 16
Renew: 99
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
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
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is with and within all of creation:
Grant us the grace to perceive your presence
even when we feel sidelined by life;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are always with us and within all of creation. Your presence is never far from us. Help us to be aware of your presence so that we may face all the turmoil in life. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our blindness to God’s constant presence.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have created us in your own image and filled us with your own Spirit and yet we fail to recognize your presence in our midst. We don’t open ourselves to your Spirit within us or within others. Instead of receiving your power to live life fully, we try to take power from others. We have lost touch with you in the daily tasks of life. Open our eyes and our hearts that we may know you in all your forms. Amen.
Leader: God is with us and within us. God desires only to be known and loved. Love God within you and within your neighbor.
Prayers of the People
We worship and adore you, O God of creation and incarnation. All of creation reflects your presence and glory.
(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. You have created us in your own image and filled us with your own Spirit and yet we fail to recognize your presence in our midst. We don't open ourselves to your Spirit within us or within others. Instead of receiving your power to live life fully, we try to take power from others. We have lost touch with you in the daily tasks of life. Open our eyes and our hearts that we may know you in all your forms.
We give you thanks for your constant love for all of creation. We thank you for the beauty of nature that reflects that love and for your children who share your love with us. We thank you for the opportunities you bring us to share your love with others.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our need and especially for those who find it difficult to believe in your loving presence because of the circumstances of their lives. We pray for those in poverty and want; those who are used and abused; those who struggle to get by.
(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 Our Father 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
Did you ever get separated from your parents when you were out away from home? Sometimes in crowds it is easy to lose sight of our parents especially when we are small and everyone is so tall around us. It is a frightening time and how good it is when we find each other. Sometimes it is difficult for us to remember that God is always with us but we know that nothing can separate us from God and God’s love.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Covid-19
by Ron Love
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, July 26, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 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.
- Hear the Voices of Peoples Long Silenced by Tom Willadsen — It will take effort, and as a preacher it will require creativity or something like it, to give voice to the four silent women in this week’s Genesis reading, but that’s a good place to start.
- Second Thoughts: I Hug, Therefore I Am by Dean Feldmeyer — In his letter to the Romans, Paul offers words of comfort to those of us who are “touch-starved” in the time of Coronavirus.
- Sermon illustrations by Chris Keating and Mary Austin.
- Worship resources by George Reed that focus on those marginalized and without agency; nothing (not even Covid-19) can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Children’s sermon: Covid-19 by Ron Love.
Hear the Voices of Peoples Long Silencedby Tom Willadsen
Genesis 29:15-28
In the News
The topics getting the most attention in the media this week are the contention over mask-wearing — whether a governor has the authority to require it, or to forbid a municipality from requiring it — and whether to open public schools at the historic beginning of the academic year in August or early September.
President Trump has taken a very strong stand, urging, demanding even, that schools re-open for in-person instruction this fall.
The President has threatened to withhold federal education funds from districts that do not accede to his wishes. It appears that President Trump does not have a clear grasp of the role the executive branch of the federal government plays in education. Only about 6% of a typical school district’s budget comes from the federal government. Specifically, federal education dollars support school lunch programs, special education and Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title I dollars are intended to support schools with poverty rates of 40% or more. Since 1965, changes in the law allow private schools to access federal money for some of the services they offer.
“The science should not stand in the way of this,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, July 16, 2020. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany again pushed the Trump administration position Thursday that all schools should reopen in the fall, despite a surge in virus cases and hospitalizations.
“We don’t think our children should be locked up at home with devastating consequences when it’s perfectly safe for them to go to school,” McEnany said at the White House press briefing.
The conundrum is described concisely in this news story from NPR, July 17, 2020:
Parents, teachers and school officials face an agonizing choice in the next few weeks — how, if at all, do they send their kids back to school? To them, it's a decision about public health and about the kids who are closest to them. The president alleges the decision is really about him. He's urging schools to open and criticizing his own administration's guidelines for opening safely and claiming without evidence that governors and school leaders want to keep schools shut to hurt him.
The vast majority of teachers believe that classroom learning is far superior to distance or “hybrid” instruction. Still, many believe their needs are not being considered in the push to get students back in schools for full day instruction. Many of their reservations are clearly expressed in this piece from CNN.
An often-overlooked factor that made the spring’s sudden switch to remote learning in many communities less stressful was that teachers had already established relationships with their students dating from the fall. Remote learning without that foundation, they contend, will be much more difficult.
The question of whether and how to reopen schools shows bitter division along party lines. The President contends those seeking to keep schools from fully reopening are doing so to hurt him politically. Senator John Kennedy (R-La) brought the rhetoric to new lows when he said on Fox News, Monday, July 13, that those who oppose schools reopening can “kiss my ass.” He added "America's going through a rough patch right now. Some people seem to be enjoying it. Maybe they just hate America. Maybe they just enjoy watching the world burn. I think some are liking the chaos because they think it gives them a political advantage. Part of that chaos is caused by school's closing. For our kids, we need to open them," Kennedy said.
"There are some people who want to keep our schools closed because they think it gives them a political advantage. They are using our kids as political pawns,” Kennedy said. (Put a pin in that term, “pawns.”)
Teachers’ perspectives need to be part of this discussion. A good summary of the many reasons why throwing the doors of our schools open this fall is unwise can be found here: “Hell No to the Hybrid Model,” by Christine Vaccaro, blog accessed at badassteachers.org, July 16, 2020. A single paragraph will expose a few of these issues.
The quixotic logic of a classroom return is obvious to teachers. It is almost inconceivable to imagine the necessary precautions being implemented broadly, fairly and successfully amongst schools and zip codes. High risk factors for COVID are embedded lifestyles for many: immunodeficiencies, obesity, asthma, diabetes, pregnancy, high blood pressure — if you mentally scan your faculty for these issues you would likely be left with a skeleton crew. It is not safe for them to be there, nor fair for those who are healthy to be reporting to duty, either. And of course, opened classrooms not only endanger students, but make them a tiny army of potential virus spreaders.
Public opinion polls vary, but generally they show a majority of parents unwilling to begin full time, in-person instruction in the fall. The broadly hinted at, though rarely articulated, belief of many is that the purpose of public schools is to provide supervision for children, so their parents can work. Thus the schools are essential to the full functioning of the economy. Since many believe that President Trump’s reelection requires a strong economy, the push to re-open schools is seen as crass politics, showing a willingness to sacrifice children (and teachers, administrators and support staff) for four more years.
Finally, often overlooked is the number of non-teachers whose health and safety may be more at-risk to exposure to Covid-19 than those in the classroom: bus drivers, food service workers and custodians, for example. Are their voices being listened for?
In the Bible
In 1971 when I first heard this story in second grade Sunday school in Peoria, Illinois, the teacher made it clear that Jacob had to work seven years for Rachel, but got Leah in a bait-and-switch (I’m sure Mrs. Goffner didn’t use that term.) then got to marry Rachel after just one week — and a promise to work seven more years. It wasn’t like Jacob had to wait another seven years to marry the sister he preferred. We got that settled.
(I have no recollection of what she made of “Give me my wife that I may go into her,” which is perhaps for the best. My therapist says I have enough stuff to deal with as it is.)
My first encounter with the story came when I had lived as long as Jacob’s first term of service. What did I know of marriage? Of Jacob’s preference for the “beautiful and lovely” one over the one with weak eyes? Of marriage feasts and veils? The only wedding I had ever been to at that time was Uncle Steve’s and my only memory was the paper breaking around the little packet of rice I would have gotten to throw and him and his bride if I just could have settled down and not tossed it playfully between my hands. I had only myself to blame, mom pointed out as the rice fell around my freshly polished oxfords.
The whole “tricking the trickster” angle was really the point. Here was Jacob who tricked his brother and father out of the status of being first born having to marry another whole woman because in Laban’s land one did not avoid the significance of birth order — that was the point. The trickster got outsmarted, get it?
“Mrs. Goffner, what was that veil made of?” remained unanswered. It must have been close to opaque. The possibility that Jacob may have been, shall we say, impaired, was off the table.
Fifty years later this story comes up on the lectionary and I’m struck by what isn’t there. Leah and Rachel have no agency. They do not even speak; they are given as compensation. The marriages were business transactions in which Leah and Rachel were the equivalent of money. We only viewed the story through Jacob’s eyes. He had every reason to be angry, to feel cheated, but maybe he also recognized that he’d been played as he himself had played his brother. Leah, Rachel and their maids Zilpah and Bilhah, had no agency; they were pawns in a chess game the men were playing. I wonder why the girls in my Sunday school class, or Mrs. Goffner, a former girl, did not point that out.
In the Sermon
Pawn, n. a person or thing manipulated and used by others… A person unwittingly used in a scheme and taken advantage of by others is an example of a pawn.
The rhetoric this week has been fascinating. Both sides of the school reopening debate accuse the other of using school children as pawns. The pawns are either having their health sacrificed by a poorly-coordinated reopening of schools, or their current social well-being and future socialization sacrificed by keeping the schools closed. There is no doubt that there are costs associated with keeping kids out of school. Remote learning is a poor substitute for what we have grown accustomed to. And while there have been no nationwide surveys of elementary school students on school reopening, numerous stories make a strong anecdotal case for their deep desire to return to the classroom environment they were exiled from in March. It is very likely that we will not be able to return to the pre-Covid Age of Education, but it’s what we know — what felt like home.
The students’ situation is analogous to that of Leah and Rachel and Zilpah and Bilhah. They have no agency and people who have much more power determine what their fate will be. Is this really the world we want to live in? If not, what can we make of the Bible’s cavalier omission of the thoughts, opinion and feelings of more than half the characters in this morning’s Hebrew scripture lesson?
It will take a new paradigm, a new set of eyes — or ears — to hear the voices of peoples long silenced. That phrase may resonate with Presbyterians. In the Brief Statement of Faith, added to The Book of Confessions in 1991, one of the things the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to do is to “hear the voices of peoples long silenced.” There is a lot of that going around these days. White people are really listening to the experiences of marginalized people. There are Black Lives Matter demonstrations in places like Red Oak, Iowa and Oconto, Wisconsin, communities with very few black people. It will take effort, and as a preacher it will require creativity or something like it, to give voice to the four silent women, but that’s a good place to start.
SECOND THOUGHTSI Hug, Therefore I Am
by Dean Feldmeyer
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
In the News
Karina Montgomery is a 50-year-old events assistant for San Diego County, California. She lives in San Diego with her cat, Tobias, and is active in community theater.
Back in March, when the quarantine was self-imposed, she followed it rigorously, leaving her apartment only to pick up groceries. After two weeks, she says, she was ready to pay $50 for a 2-minute hug. Even after California gradually started reopening in May, she remained vigilant — “horrified at the maskless throngs she’d seen flocking to the beaches and congregating downtown.”
All in all, her isolation lasted 106 days. Finally, after three months of being alone (sorry, Tobias), she was eager to see some friends and get that hug she so desperately needed. But she wanted to do it as safely as possible and there aren’t any CDC or government guidelines for how to safely touch another human being whom you love.
In an article for the Washington Post, Montgomery sets down an oral history of how one woman sought to once again make that much needed physical contact with others. The article concludes with this paragraph.
“I asked Jonathan: “Could you just lay your hands at the base of my neck, top of my shoulder?” Ohmygod, it was warm and heavy, and I could lay my cheek on his hand for a second if I wanted to. Just the presence of a person touching in an intentional and loving way was so sweet and so generous and so simple. I still feel like the world is crazy. But individually, I felt better. I felt like I existed.”
Mary Daniel is the founder and CEO of ClaimMedic, a small company in Jacksonville, Florida, that helps patients with health-care bills. Her husband, Steve, has Alzheimer’s Disease and, since March 10th, has live in a nursing home memory care unit. The day after she signed him into the unit, she received a call telling her that, per state mandate, she would not be allowed to visit him.
Before Coronavirus invaded, she was there every evening to chat with him, get him ready for bed and lay with him for a couple of hours until he fell asleep. Now all she could do is stand outside his window and wave at him, which, inevitably, left him in tears.
This went on for three months and, then, one day, Mary saw an ad that said the nursing home was looking for help and she applied. She got the job. Now, CEO Mary washes dishes three days a week in the facility’s kitchen and, then, she gets to spend some precious hours in actual physical contact with her husband.
Not until we weren’t allowed to touch each other did many of us realize just how important that touch can be. Indeed, as Karina Montgomery so beautifully puts it, “I felt like I existed.” It is in human touch that many of us are authenticated and affirmed. In the time of Coronavirus, the people of God are called to find and share comfort from spiritual sources that touch not just our skin, but our souls as well.
In the Scripture
My colleague and fellow TIW writer, Rev. Tom Willadsen recently said, “I don’t think I’ve ever conducted a funeral that I didn’t read from Romans 8.” And most of us would concur.
This chapter, often artfully redacted for use in funeral liturgies, is full of affirmations and promises that ease our pain and fill the void that is left in our souls when we lose one whom we love. The last paragraph of the passage under consideration for today offers comfort for those who find themselves in the midst of separation and estrangement whether it comes voluntarily or involuntarily.
We might be separated from ones we love — physically, emotionally, mentally, whatever — but we are never separated from God. Indeed, there is nothing, nothing that can separate us from God’s love. Not death (the big separator) or life, not the rulers of heaven or the rulers of earth, not the problems and vicissitudes of the present or the future, not powers of any kind (political, military, religious, etc.), not even mountains or valleys — literal or symbolic.
None of these, no, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We would do well to ponder that statement in all of its concrete specificity because our inclination is, generally, to seek loopholes in it so that we can count ourselves in and others out.
Like, doesn’t that part about “…in Christ Jesus our Lord,” mean that this applies only to Christians? Doesn’t that give us permission to count others out? Too bad; nice to be me; sucks to be you! Well, it might until we re-examine the gospels and discover that Jesus, himself, did not limit his saving grace to those who were approved by the religious legalists of his time and those who followed him, but included Samaritans, women, Centurions, church leaders, children, beggars, the disabled, lepers, outcasts and forgotten people of all kinds.
So, see, when Paul says “nothing,” what he really means is “NOTHING!”
This is radical inclusivity, dangerous inclusivity, extravagant, even wasteful inclusivity and it’s not up to us. God has already included everyone under that divine umbrella of love. We can get on board with that or we can find ourselves on the outside looking in, not because God has excluded us but because we have excluded ourselves.
In the Sermon
Once they told me I couldn’t touch my face it was like my hands and face became the Romeo and Juliet of my body. They couldn’t stay away from each other. They simply had to be together, touching, caressing, embracing each other all the time. I never realized how many places there are on my face that itched and needed scratching or rubbing. It was driving me nuts!
And, if not being able to touch my own face was this vexing, how much more so not being able to touch the people I love, my children, my grandchildren, my friends. The frustration is nearly palpable and, I suspect, it is for everyone. There is a ubiquitous exasperation in the country and it is, I suspect, at least part of what is fueling those angry anti-mask, anti-social distancing, anti-regulation of any kind demonstrations.
But, like it or not, the time of Coronavirus is the time of social distancing. We are told by the leading scientific minds in the world that wearing masks and staying at least six feet away from each other is the surest way to save lives and defeat this horrible disease. But it hurts.
We long to touch and be touched by others. We yearn for the laying on of hands.
Then, into the midst of our pain, into the middle of our Corona infested world walks Saint Paul with these beautiful words of comfort and assurance.
We may be physically separated from each other, we may be physically separated from our houses of worship, but we need not be, indeed, we cannot be separated from the Lord our God. And, as we model our lives after the life of God’s son, we are reminded that we live not just in the physical realm but in a spiritual realm as well, a realm wherein nothing can separate us from God…or each other.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:Genesis 29:15-28
Silent characters
There are four women named in Genesis 29:15-28, and two men. While it is the men’s voices that are heard, it is the women whose lives bear the promises of this story. Laben’s daughters are the focus of most of the story’s action, though the realities of patriarchalism mean they are kept silent. Two other women, Zilpah and Bilhah, are maids given to each of Laben’s daughter. They also do not speak, but still they are named. It is perhaps a reminder of how Israel’s story was often passed by generations of silent servants.
Zilphah and Bilhah, and even Rachel and Leah, would understand the dilemma’s faced by many of their contemporary sisters. For example, thousands of women (and men) laid off during Covid-19 will soon see their unemployment benefits expire. In Oklahoma last week, the state’s beleaguered unemployment commission held a “mega processing” event in order to help thousands of individuals snagged by delays in processing unemployment claims. Many of the stalled claims are stuck in the state’s mainframe computer that dates to 1978.
Ashley Love, a former Enterprise Rent-a-Car employee, made sure she was up by 4 a.m. to drop off her daughter before heading to the mega event. Laid off in March, Love’s benefits inexplicably stopped four weeks ago. When she arrived at the convention center, officials told her to come back the next day. “It’s appalling,” Love said. “I don’t understand how they can do this to people,” Love said. “One day, I called 15 times in two hours, and they either don’t answer or take your calls and hang up on you.”
* * *
Genesis 29:15-28
Jacob’s love for Rachel
Jacob and Rachel’s love story is one for the ages. But the stress they endured could have created significant stress. Sociologists and marriage researchers are wondering about the impact of stay-at-home orders on marriage. Power couples used to long commutes and business travel find themselves sharing a couch and negotiating wifi bandwidth. One marriage researcher suggests this could be a “make-or-break moment” for many couples.
“As my colleagues across the social sciences and I shared in a recent review of relevant research,” writes Eli Finkel, author of The All or Nothing Marriage. “Covid-19 requires large-scale behavior changes that pose significant psychological burdens. Those burdens descend upon each partner individually, with quarantine linked to feelings of confusion and anger, and they change the dynamic within the couple.”
Stressors accompanying Covid-19 could include job losses, parenting and forced togetherness. But Finkel notes some couples may benefit from these unique circumstances. Finkel says that there are ways of thriving in these moments of forced isolation.
“The key is to recalibrate expectations of what the relationship can realistically provide under the circumstances. By lowering unrealistic expectations, couples can keep difficulties from growing into a full-blown relationship crisis. But by holding onto certain important expectations — rather than expecting nothing at all — couples can use the forced isolation together to play to their strengths, perhaps even growing closer.”
* * *
Genesis 29:15-28
The Chicks Speak Out
Singers Natalie Maines, and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer are no strangers to speaking out. The women, formerly known as “The Dixie Chicks,” most recently dropped “Dixie” from their Grammy-winning name as a way of protesting global racial inequity. Maguire called it a “stupid name” picked when the girls were teenagers. “We wanted to change it years and years ago. I just wanted to separate myself from people who wave that Dixie flag,” Maguire told the New York Times.
Their latest album addresses a wide-array of social issues including gun control, climate change, abortion, and the Black Lives Matter movement. The song, “March March” includes the line, “If your voice held no power, they wouldn’t try to silence you.”
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Helped in weakness
The movie “Harriet,” released in 2019 and available on HBO this month, is a compelling biopic about Harriet Tubman and her courageous rescuing of more than 70 slaves. The story clearly communicates Tubman’s deep understanding that nothing could separate her from the presence of God. Tubman’s inner sense of call and conviction that God was using her to fight for freedom is evident through her daring efforts. Tubman received a brain injury and nearly died when a white man struck her with a two-pound lead weight. Despite her injury and her small stature, Tubman raced through more than 100 miles of wilderness to gain freedom. Returning to the plantation where she had been a slave, Tubman stands in the darkness and sings, “Go, Down, Moses.” As she sings, slaves begin emerging, responding with “Let my people go.”
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Neither death, nor life, nor lack of PPE shall separate us from the love of God
Chaplain Rocky Walker tells reporters that facing death in New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital has him fighting for his life more than when he was a soldier in the Gulf War.
"It was very scary, very dangerous," he says. "Working in the ICUs and seeing all that suffering and seeing families being decimated by this thing: I didn't see that in combat, I saw it first-hand here."
Chaplains at Mount Sinai carried messages from families to hospitalized loved ones. They entered spaces families were not allowed to go, trying to connect with dying patients despite being robed with layers of PPE. Walker would often hold up an iPhone or iPad to allow families to Facetime with each other. As Walker says, “in a room that’s lonely, we’re never alone.”
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
What are we to say to these things? (Hint: wear a mask)
In the height of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City, senior paramedic and firefighter Anthony Almojera recounted the “toughest day” of his career to a BBC journalist. The account reads like a script for an action movie — except it is all true.
He explains that the NYFD typically responds to 4,000 calls daily. This spring the number ticked up to 6,500 a day – a number similar to 9/11.
Almojera narrates showing up for the start of his shift at a Brooklyn firehouse at 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning:
I put on my uniform, grab my radio and start the process of decontaminating my equipment. We have to wipe down all the radios, keys, trucks, bags and the rest of the gear. This virus can stay alive on everything. Nothing is safe — even your co-workers.
In wars you see the bullet, you know who your enemy is. This is a war with an invisible bullet — everyone you come into contact with is a bullet who could get you.
I log on that morning at 06:02. I'm able to go get a bite to eat at the bagel shop. I start to hear the radio get busy around 07:00. We have already had more than 1,500 calls since midnight. I get called for the assignment — a cardiac arrest.
We arrive at the house and I put on my mask, gown and gloves.
We find a man. His family says he has had a fever and cough for five days. We start CPR and I watch the medics pass a tube down his throat to breathe for him and the IV gets started.
We work on him for about 30 minutes before we pronounce him dead. I make sure the crews are OK and get back in my truck — decontaminating everything first. I hit the button to go available.
Twenty minutes later, I get another cardiac arrest. Same symptoms, same procedures, same results. This virus attacks the lungs: you can't get enough oxygen into your system, then other systems start to shut down and then organ failure.
We hit the button, get another one.
Hit the button after that, get another one.
There's only one patient we've seen so far who I feel wasn't Covid-19 and that's because it was a suicide. Imagine: I was there and my brain felt relief. This person's dead and it's a suicide. I felt relief that it was a regular job.
It is now around 11:00 and I've done about six cardiac arrests.
In normal times, a medic gets two or three in a week, maybe. You can have a busy day sometimes, but never this. Never this.
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:1 Kings 3:5-12
Wisdom from Others
When Solomon asks God for the gift of wisdom, he has the sense that there is something outside himself that will make him a more faithful king. He says to God, “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” He already knows that his wisdom will benefit the people of Israel. God praises him for this choice, which moves beyond his own personal gain. Sociologist Nicholas Christakis, who runs the Human Nature Lab at Yale, says that this kind of wisdom is unique to human beings. We can learn from each other’s experiences in a way that no other mammals can. He says, if “you put your hand in the fire, and you learn that it burns, so you’ve acquired some knowledge at some price. Or I can watch you put your hand in the fire, and I get almost as much knowledge for none of the price, which is really super-efficient. Or, I observe you eat red berries, and you die. And so now I’ve learned something at no cost; it’s amazing.”
We take it another step, and “we do something even more than that. We copy each other. We imitate each other. We learn from each other, which is rare in the animal kingdom, although it happens. We teach each other things. We set out to teach you how to build a fire. And this is exceedingly rare, but it’s universal in us. And so these are some very positive, amazing qualities that are shaped by natural selection, are encoded in our genes and are universal in humans and that are good and that serve to countermand some of our vile propensities, which, alas, we also have.”
Wisdom itself is a gift to human kind, and the wisdom each of us has goes on to enrich others. Solomon is already wise enough to ask for the right gift from God.
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Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
The Kingdom of Heaven
The realm of God is like a treasure hidden in a field, Jesus says, which requires a person to make a choice to seek it out. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it,” Jesus uses these images of finding something hidden to evoke the realm of God. The kingdom of heaven is also like a couch, bought by three roommates in New Paltz, NY at Goodwill.
They brought the couch home and then “Reese Werkhoven, Cally Guasti and Lara Russo realized that the lumps in their couch's pillows were actually envelopes stuffed with money. Just two months earlier, they'd bought the couch for $20 at a Salvation Army store…They kept finding more envelopes in the couch, pulling money out of it like an upholstered ATM.
Werkhoven added, "The most money I'd ever found in a couch was like 50 cents. Honestly, I'd be ecstatic to find just $5 in a couch." The discovery was like a dream for the three friends, all of whom are either in college or recent graduates. As they counted the money, they talked about what they might do with it; Werkhoven says he wanted to buy his mom a new car. But then they spotted a name among the envelopes, and realized they were faced with an ethical puzzle.”
The kingdom of heaven requires hard choices. “They asked their parents for advice; don't spend the money, they were told. A phone number led them to the family that had donated the couch — and to answers about why it was full of money. The roommates drove to the woman's house in what The Little Rebellion calls "a rustic home in a rough neighborhood." "I think the part of this whole experience that cleared away my prior thoughts and worries was when I saw the woman's daughter and granddaughter greet us at the door," Werkhoven tells the blog. "I could just tell right away that these were nice people." It turned out that the money was socked away out of the woman's late husband's concerns that he wouldn't always be there for his wife (she has chosen to remain anonymous). It represented decades of savings, including wages from the woman's job as a florist. For years, she also slept on the couch. But recent back problems led her daughter and son-in-law to replace it with a bed, meaning that the couch had to go. "This was her life savings and she actually said something really beautiful, like 'This is my husband looking down on me and this was supposed to happen,' " Guasti said…”
The kingdom of heaven is about treasure found, and the treasure may be the gift of serving and making a connection, more than the treasure itself.
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Romans 8:26-39
Prayer is the Hardest Virtue
“We do not know how to pray as we ought,” Paul writes to the faithful in Rome, and many contemporary people would agree with him. Theologian Roberta Bondi tells a story about the desert fathers and mothers, and their view of prayer. “One of the Abbas was asked one time which was the most difficult virtue to acquire. He went through the whole list of one virtue after another and then he concluded by saying, “But prayer is the hardest of the virtues because prayer is warfare to the last breath.” In prayer, we are likely, and it’s certainly what we want, to see ourselves as we really are. We can’t expect that we are going to be healed of the deep wounds of our heart without seeing what those wounds are. It’s also not a peaceful activity when we discover or come face to face with the reality of the world.” The Spirit, thankfully, is praying with and for us, embracing and amplifying our efforts.
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Romans 8:26-39
Learning to Pray
Roberta Bondi, a professor emeritus at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, made an academic study of the desert fathers and mothers, the abbas and ammas. To her surprise, they also taught her how to pray. One day, her husband was late coming home, as he often was in those days. She recalls, “I was sitting there on the couch and all of a sudden the Abbas from the ancient desert started saying to me, “Roberta, Roberta, we have something to say to you.” And I said, “Shut up and leave me alone. I’m worrying.” And they said, “Oh, oh, no. Come on, now. Come on, listen.” “Shh, shh, I’m worrying. Leave me alone.” And finally I said, “All right. All right. What do you have to say?” And they said to me, “Well, now, you know that the main thing we’re doing out here in the desert is prayer, and you have spent a lot of time studying us and working on us, and you might consider whether this might be something for you.” And I said to them, “Oh, come on, now. Look, I am a rational, reasonable woman, and I’m an academic, and this is, what you’re suggesting, just is not really for me.” And the answer to that was, “Ho, ho, ho, you might also consider as part of this that you have put Richard into the place of God for you. You know how we say that no one or no thing can fill that hole in your life except God, that your identity rests only in God, and that all other loves come out of that, and that no human being can ever fill that. Of course you feel the way you do.” So I was very embarrassed, because I knew, of course, instantly that they were right. So I said, “OK. All right. All right. I’ll try it.”
So, well, first, I let Richard come home and then yelled at him a little bit. And then I went out and got a book that had a pattern of prayer in it that was similar to what was used in the early church, and that was what started me on my discipline of prayer. And I can say several things that I learned out of that, that I like to share with others, and one of the things is you don’t need any kind of noble reason or highfalutin or serious reason. Any reason to begin a pattern of prayer is a good reason because prayer is about everyday life. It isn’t the great spiritual, the mystery that is too high and lofty for the likes of us.”
She adds, about prayer, “the fact is, if prayer is our end of a relationship with God, that’s not the way we are with the people we love a large portion of the time. We simply are in their presence. We’re going about our lives at the same time in each other’s presence, aware and sustained by each other, but not much more than that.” The Spirit intercedes for us, praying as we pray, adding to the relationship.
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WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: O give thanks to God, call on God’s name.
People: We will make known God’s deeds among the peoples.
Leader: Glory in God’s holy name and let your hearts rejoice.
People: We will seek God and God’s presence continually.
Leader: Remember the wonderful works God has done.
People: This is our God whose judgments are in all the earth.
OR
Leader: God who is always with us is with us still.
People: We rejoice in God’s constant presence of love.
Leader: When others ignore us or misuse us, God is with us.
People: Thanks be to our everloving God.
Leader: Rejoice in God’s love by sharing it with others.
People: We will serve God by loving all of God’s children.
Hymns and Songs:
Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
UMH: 103
H82: 423
PH: 263
NCH: 1
CH: 66
LBW: 526
ELW: 834
W&P: 48
AMEC: 71
STLT: 273
Renew: 46
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
UMH: 110
H82: 687/688
PH: 260
AAHH: 124
NNBH: 37
NCH: 439/440
CH: 65
LBW: 228/229
ELW: 503/504/505
W&P: 588
AMEC: 54
STLT: 200
The God of Abraham Praise
UMH: 116
H82: 401
NCH: 24
CH: 24
LBW: 544
ELW: 831
W&P: 16
Renew: 51
O God, Our Help in Ages Past
UMH: 117
H82: 680:
AAHH: 170
NNBH: 46
NCH: 25
CH: 67
LBW: 320
ELW: 632
W&P: 84
AMEC: 61
STLT: 281
Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah
UMH: 127
H82: 690
PH: 281
AAHH: 138/139/140
NNBH: 232
NCH: 18/19
CH: 622
LBW: 343
ELW: 618
W&P: 501
AMEC: 52/53/65
My Soul Gives Glory to My God
UMH: 198
CH: 130
ELW: 882
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life
UMH: 427
H82: 609
PH: 408
NCH: 543
CH: 665
LBW: 429
ELW: 719
W&P: 591
AMEC: 561
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
UMH: 430
H82: 659/660
PH: 357
NNBH: 445
NCH: 503
CH: 602
LBW: 492
ELW: 818
W&P: 589
AMEC: 299
Be Thou My Vision
UMH: 451
H82: 488
PH: 339
NCH: 451
CH: 595
ELW: 793
W&P: 502
AMEC: 281
STLT: 20
Renew: 151
I Will Call upon the Lord
CCB: 9
Renew: 15
Sing unto the Lord a New Song
CCB: 16
Renew: 99
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
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
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is with and within all of creation:
Grant us the grace to perceive your presence
even when we feel sidelined by life;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are always with us and within all of creation. Your presence is never far from us. Help us to be aware of your presence so that we may face all the turmoil in life. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our blindness to God’s constant presence.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have created us in your own image and filled us with your own Spirit and yet we fail to recognize your presence in our midst. We don’t open ourselves to your Spirit within us or within others. Instead of receiving your power to live life fully, we try to take power from others. We have lost touch with you in the daily tasks of life. Open our eyes and our hearts that we may know you in all your forms. Amen.
Leader: God is with us and within us. God desires only to be known and loved. Love God within you and within your neighbor.
Prayers of the People
We worship and adore you, O God of creation and incarnation. All of creation reflects your presence and glory.
(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. You have created us in your own image and filled us with your own Spirit and yet we fail to recognize your presence in our midst. We don't open ourselves to your Spirit within us or within others. Instead of receiving your power to live life fully, we try to take power from others. We have lost touch with you in the daily tasks of life. Open our eyes and our hearts that we may know you in all your forms.
We give you thanks for your constant love for all of creation. We thank you for the beauty of nature that reflects that love and for your children who share your love with us. We thank you for the opportunities you bring us to share your love with others.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our need and especially for those who find it difficult to believe in your loving presence because of the circumstances of their lives. We pray for those in poverty and want; those who are used and abused; those who struggle to get by.
(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 Our Father 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
Did you ever get separated from your parents when you were out away from home? Sometimes in crowds it is easy to lose sight of our parents especially when we are small and everyone is so tall around us. It is a frightening time and how good it is when we find each other. Sometimes it is difficult for us to remember that God is always with us but we know that nothing can separate us from God and God’s love.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMONCovid-19
by Ron Love
- Have the children sit a safe distance apart, with their masks on / the children watching from home should also be wearing a face mask
- Give each child a can of air freshener / be sure you have enough cans so no child is left out / children at home should get a can from the cupboard / if possible each parent at home should have a can and be wearing a mask
- All of the cans should have the same odor
- Now lifting the cans in the air let the spraying begin / no child should point the can at another child / the pastor should also participate in this playtime / the child at home can spray, hopefully with their parents having cans allowing them to participate
- Now ask the children if they could smell the droplets / see the droplets / feel the droplets on their skin
- Now discuss that these droplets are the same as Covid-19 droplets except we cannot see, smell or feel the Covid-19 droplets
- Now take a can of cleaning duster used for computers and spray it / the droplets are there just like the air freshener but explain we cannot see them, smell them, or feel them touch our skin
- Demonstrate that the cleaning duster really does have droplets and blow some dust away with it
- Then discuss how Covid-19 is real even though we cannot smell it, see it, or feel it
- Then discuss how we can avoid these invisible droplets that will make us sick / we practice social distancing, we wear our face masks, we wash our hands.
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The Immediate Word, July 26, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 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.
