Hope and the Politics of Doom
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For November 8, 2020:
Hope and the Politics of Doom
by Dean Feldmeyer
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
A few elections ago a member of my church and I managed to maintain a cordial, even friendly relationship even though our theology and politics were profoundly different. One day he sent me a news clipping that told a beautiful story of a beautifully charitable act that had been undertaken by the candidate for president that he favored.
I was moved by the story and, in an email, I told him so. “I do not doubt that your candidate is a good person,” I said. “In fact, I am sure that he is. I just disagree with his politics.”
Later, in a separate conversation, my friend conceded that he felt the same about the candidate I supported.
Today, as I write these words, we are six days from another presidential election and I don’t think I could say the same thing. I can’t speak for my friend, but I suspect he feels the same.
Writing on October 25, in the Washington Post, political analyst Marc Fisher described the mood of the country as one that “reeks of despair.” Politicians running for election almost always describe the current election as the most important one in history, he says. “But the 2020 vote is taking place with the country in a historically dark mood — low on hope, running on spiritual empty, convinced that the wrong outcome will bring disaster.”
By the time you read this the election will be over and a whole bunch of people from one side or the other will be grieving over the outcome. Many of those grieving souls will be the Christians who populate our pews and it will be our job to sympathize with their feelings of grief, but, at the same time, to encourage them to grieve not as those who have no hope, but as persons whose lives are ruled by hope, and faith, and love.
In the News
The grief that threatens to overwhelm some of our people after the election is not born of politics alone. Politics is a big part of it but it’s also deeper than that.
There’s a house in my community with a big 4’X4’ sign in the front yard that says, simply, “Trump” in big letters then, below that, “Make liberals cry again.”
Nothing about why he’s a good president and will continue to be one. Nothing about what he plans to do, specifically, to rid us of the coronavirus. Nothing about the economy or national security or economic relief or education or healthcare.
It’s as though, for the people in that house, it’s not just about politics. The whole point of the election, for them, is not to win so America can be made better, but to win because in doing so, they can hurt the people with whom they disagree.
Even as we work to hurt each other, the forces of nature also seem to be conspiring to hurt us as much as possible. There’s the coronavirus, of course. Infection rates are increasing faster than they have since March. As of October 30th, the US has over 9 million infections and over 232,000 dead. Break that down and it factors out to a new infection every 1.2 seconds and a death every 107 seconds.
42,000 wildfires have burned over 6.7 million acres on the western end of our nation.
We’ve had so many named storms this year that we’ve run out of names and had to turn to the Greek alphabet for labels. The most recent was hurricane Zed. We’re tied for the most named storms in a single year and we still have a month of hurricane season to go.
The Gross Domestic Product has improved in the second quarter of this year but it’s still more than 3% lower than it was before the pandemic. Unemployment is at 8%, a quarter of Americans can’t pay their bills and congress just threw up their hands and left town. There was plenty of time to confirm a supreme court justice but not enough to agree on a way to help millions of Americans who are drowning in financial problems, none of which are of their own making.
Another mentally ill person, this one an African American, shot and killed by police in Philadelphia and people seem more intent on casting blame than on solving the problem of police as first responders to mental illness calls.
Is it any wonder this election “reeks of despair,” as Marc Fisher says, or that, as a nation, we seem to be “low on hope, running on spiritual empty, convinced that the wrong outcome will bring disaster?”
Locked in our homes, afraid to visit our favorite restaurant or our families for the holidays, we are being told by scientists to wear masks and avoid close contacts with others. We are told by anti-maskers that if we stay home and wear masks when we go out, we are mindless sheep, surrendering to the politics of fear and despair.
But to live hopefully is not to live in a fantasy or a wish dream. Hope, especially that hope that finds its genesis in the gospel, is a strong and robust thing. It lives not in denial but in full awareness of the problems that face us and faith in a God who will lead us through them.
Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians makes that point.
In the Scripture
Biblical scholars tell us that 1 Thessalonians, written in about 50 CE, twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus and 20-30 years before the publication of the first gospel, Mark, is the oldest Christian literature in existence.
It is the first written description of what it looks like to live life according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and, in it, Paul addresses something that he fears is missing in the lives of the Thessalonian Christians.
In chapter three (v. 6) we learn through Timothy’s report that the Christians of Thessalonica are strong in faith and love but that (v.10) something is lacking. Those of us familiar with the 13th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians know immediately what that third thing is. (Cf. Verse 13: “And now abide faith, hope, and love. These three...”) Faith and love they have in abundance. It’s hope that is missing.
In the fourth chapter (vss. 13 ff.) we learn that the Thessalonians are grieving the deaths of some of their members, faithful souls who may very well have died as a result of their steadfast faith in Jesus Christ.
Grief is, of course, a natural and even healthy thing. It allows us to express our sorrows openly and to acknowledge and affirm with one another the heartfelt pain that loss creates. So, grieve, Paul says, but do not grieve as the pagans do, as people without hope. We Christians are people of hope and we grieve as those with hope. We do not give oursleves over to hopelessness and despair. Our grief is real but our hope is no less real than our grief.
We know that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he defeated death on our behalf and, therefore, we, too, will be raised from the dead.
The details of how this is to be accomplished we leave in God’s hands and are comfortable doing so because, as we are people of hope, we are also people of faith. And, being people of faith, we are also people of light and not darkness. (5:4-5).
In the Pulpit
We preach a lot about faith and love.
Hope, not so much. Hope is hard — hard to define, hard to identify, and sometimes, hard to come by.
So we couch it in cliches that help no one and only tend to annoy and anger the grieving person and cause the rest of us to roll our eyes: “Everything happens for a reason;” or “She’s in a better place;” or “God knows what he’s doing;” or “Time heals all wounds;” or, worst of all, “God needed another angel.”
Sometimes our hope deficit has nothing to do with the death of a person but rather the death of an ideal or an expectation or with a personal failure to obtain a goal or achieve a longed-for victory.
We strike out three times in a row and wonder if maybe we were never meant to play baseball. We forget our lines, lines that we knew perfectly well through all the rehearsals but just, inexplicably, left us in the performance and we vow to never take the stage again.
We find oursleves unable to make the dance moves or hit the high notes that were once so easy for us and, disappointed, we give up on dancing or singing. Arthritis stiffens our fingers and slows our playing of the piano or the fiddle. Age slows our steps and shrinks our reach. A friend disappoints or betrays us and we disavow friendship forever.
It’s not just death or politics that brings us to that place where we are so dangerously low on hope and running on spiritual empty. It’s life. All of life.
It is then that we Christians tap into that extra reserve of hope that is ours in Jesus Christ.
The late Peter Gomes was professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School and Minister at Harvard's Memorial Church. In his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News? he says that Christian hope is not merely the optimistic, Pollyanna notion that somehow everything will turn out alright in the end if everyone is just nice like us. Hope is the more rugged view, he says, that even if things don’t turn out alright, we can and will, with God’s help, endure through and beyond those terrible times that disappoint or threaten to undo us.
Hope, he says, can seem a wimpy word, and it can be as flaccid and weak as an overripe banana, yet if we remember, as Paul reminds us, that genuine hope, a hope worth having, is forged upon the anvil of adversity, and that hope and suffering are related through the formation of character, then we will realize that hope is much more than mere optimism. Hope is that which gets us through and beyond when the worst that can happen happens.
The courageous prayer born of hope is grounded in the promise of God to see us through even the most difficult and painful events of our lives.
And we can pray that prayer because we are, you see, people of faith, people of love, people of hope.
Amen.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Other Worldly Hope
by Tom Willadsen
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13
In the Scriptures
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Remember, Paul was writing to the Thessalonians who had a very specific question: what is the fate of those who were in Christ, but have died prior to Christ’s return? He was writing to reassure them and to give them hope. There were a lot of non-Jews who had come to Christ in Thessalonica; they were unfamiliar with things that Paul and Christians in other communities — where churches had emerged from synagogues — would take for granted. Paul lays out a sequence for how the resurrection of the dead in Christ will play out. All those in Christ will “meet the Lord,” but those who have already died will be first in line. Those who are living will not die, but be taken up to heaven directly. This is what has come to be called the Rapture, a term that does not appear in the NRSV, though Blondie had a chart-topper by that name in 1981. This word certainly was reassuring to those who believed that their loved ones may have missed out because they died prior to the Parousia. They believed Christ would return at any minute; needless to say, the Thessalonians were not buying green bananas!
Joshua 24:1-3a, 15-25
Choose. Pick one. Perhaps this is an appropriate reading for American Christians to hear five days after the polls closed on our national election. Writing on October 30th I do not know whether the winner of the presidential election will be decided by November 8. There is a very good chance that control of the Senate will also be in doubt. One essential difference between Israel’s public acceptance of Joshua’s preference to serve the Lord and our situation is American voters cast their ballots secretly. The Israelites make their decision and declaration publically and fully aware that there will be consequences if they stray.
Speaking of consequences: while most of us are longing for the end of the campaign, the deep division and hostility between the Blues and Reds make me wonder whether either side will be able to govern, given the rhetoric on both sides that the other side’s election will be catastrophic.
For those who are opting to sit this election out under the “A pox on both your houses; they’re all crooks” gambit, I cite Rush, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Or as Bob Dylan famously sang, “You’re gonna have to serve someone.” There’s no avoiding taking a stand. Joshua takes an unambiguous, public stand in choosing the Lord who brought his people out of slavery; his clarity is refreshing to this weary American.
Matthew 25:1-13
There is a wide variety of wedding customs hinted at in scripture. It appears that Matthew is operating under the practice of the groom leaving his home with an entourage, marrying the bride chez elle, then returning to his home with her people for a huge, perhaps two week, blow-out celebration. No one wants to miss that. There’s a good chance that grooms typically made the journey after nightfall.
A closer look at the text makes things a little less clear. The parable is introduced, “The kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps…” The kingdom is like all ten bridesmaids; some of whom were prepared and took extra oil for their lamps, some of whom did not. Is there inequality in the kingdom of heaven? Room for the prudent and the rash? And what are we to make of the five bridesmaids who were unwilling to share their oil? Were they selfish? Were they wealthier? Were they correct in saying that there would not be enough oil for all ten? Will the kingdom of heaven include those who were admitted to the wedding banquet and those who were locked out? That seems a fair interpretation of the parable, given the introduction. Finally, the conclusion: “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour...” appears to apply to everyone. After all, all ten bridesmaids fell asleep.
In the News
Perhaps it’s refreshing for something other than Covid-19 to be the top news story, but with the deep divisions this election season has exposed in American society, perhaps not. The Electoral College, which effectively equals 53 elections (more if you factor in Nebraska and Maine, who award their electoral votes by congressional district) is a cumbersome, complicated and perhaps antiquated process for determining the outcome of national elections. Each jurisdiction has different systems and rules governing counting ballots. Some of the states whose outcome is likely to determine the outcome of the election — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — do not have mechanisms in place to count ballots promptly. They have also experienced unprecedented numbers of early and mail-in ballots which they are forbidden from counting prior to Election Day. In the same way that the hardest part of cancer is the waiting between diagnosis and beginning treatment, the most tense time of the 2020 election may come after the polls have closed and before the results are released.
Whether the results will be accepted by the losing candidate is another potential complication.
The President has said he plans to hold rallies after election day in states where votes are still being tabulated. The rallies he has staged in the weeks leading up to the election have featured his denunciation of federal health officials and the media. He has repeatedly claimed that the nation has “turned the corner” on responding to Covid-19, despite the Centers for Disease Control announcing October 30’s total of new Covid cases was the highest yet.
In the Sermon
The two greatest fears among adults in the United States are the unknown and the loss of control. Seriously, public speaking, snakes and death have tumbled in recent decades compared to the new Big Two. There is a very good chance the result of the presidential election will be unresolved on Sunday, November 8th. What reassurance, or hope, do you have to offer to your congregation this week? Remember, Paul wanted the Thessalonians not to grieve as others do, but to live with the hope of the Resurrection. Remember, hope is not optimism. Hope has an “in-spite-of” element to it.
You may be tempted to lift up Joshua’s insistent loyalty as a model for your congregation. Be careful of applying his and Israel’s pledge of faithfulness to the God of their liberation to one’s loyalty to one presidential candidate or another. Perhaps a reference to last week’s gospel lesson’s conclusion: rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s, is in order.
You may be tempted to lift up the model of the five bridesmaids who brought extra oil. They were prepared and thus could participate fully in the celebration. Some of your members may be preparing not to join the celebration, but to oppose the newly-elected President and believe it's a faithful response.
Perhaps the wisest course will be to pick up on Paul’s point that being in Christ makes one different. We do not grieve as others do. We live in a hope that the world may not be ready to understand, because it is, indeed, other worldly.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Mary Austin:
1 Thessalonians 13-18
Signs of Hope
Paul writes to encourage the people of the Thessalonian church, who have questions about the people around them who have died. Into their time of grief, Paul offers a word of hope. Jeannie Hughes found an unusual source of hope after the death of her son. She recalls, “Snow clung to the wintery branches of the wisteria climbing the trellises in our backyard. Gazing out the kitchen window with my husband, Roger, I thought, I know exactly how it felt to be frozen in that bitterness. We had just returned from burying our 21-year-old son, Steven.” She felt alone in her grief, isolated from God. Her son had been a healthy young adult right up until the accident that took his life.
Hughes recalls, “As I looked out at the yard, my mind flooded with visions of our son over the years: Steven laughing, throwing snowballs at his big sister. Steven climbing the monkey bars on the swing set, sliding down the slide, chasing our dogs. A flutter of wings grabbed my attention. A mourning dove landed on a branch of the wisteria. Then another dove, and another, their pale gray feathers beautiful against the snow.” She commented to her husband that she had never seen a mourning dove in their yard, and her husband, Roger noted, “Seven of them. God’s perfect number.”
I was startled when he began to pray. “Oh, Lord, if these doves are a symbol of your grace, sent on the saddest day of our lives, please let us feel your comfort.”
“At that moment the sky filled with doves; they descended over the yard, lining every branch of the wisteria. With no place left to land, some floated above the cold ground. Soft coos filled the air. We watched in silence, mesmerized, for several minutes, until they suddenly flew back up into the sky, gray wings ablur. “That’s it,” Roger said. “God has given us a sign.” “Of what?” I said. I turned away from the window, feeling numb. How was Roger able to find comfort in the doves when all I saw was a bunch of birds?” The gifts continued. “Over the next two years a few doves visited our late-winter yard, but nothing like on the day of Steven’s funeral. Roger reminded me often of the flock we’d seen, still sure it was a message of consolation, but I felt nothing. The bitterness in my heart had not melted. How I wished I could find the solace that my husband found in his faith!” The path through grief, back toward hope, was long and complicated, and she began to see a grief counselor. “My healing began with a gradual understanding that what had happened to Steven was not God’s fault, but just a terrible accident. I realized that ultimately my tears weren’t for Steven, but for myself, for what I’d lost. I returned to church. I no longer felt isolated from Roger in my grief. I no longer felt isolated from God.”
Grieving is necessary, even for people of faith; and hope allows us to make the journey.
* * *
1 Thessalonians 13-18
Grieve With Hope
Paul reminds the Thessalonian church that faith in Jesus doesn’t save us from grief. He writes to add to their understanding of grief, so they do not grieve “as those who have no hope.” Francis Weller finds that the process of grieving draws us closer to the Spirit. He notes that “The territory of grief is heavy. Even the word carries weight. Grief comes from the Latin, gravis, meaning, heavy, from which we get gravity. We use the term gravitas to speak of a quality in some people who carry the weight of the world with a dignified bearing. And so it is, when we learn to accompany our grief with dignity…No one escapes suffering in this life. None of us is exempt from loss, pain, illness and death. Yet, how is it that we have so little understanding of these essential experiences? How is it we have attempted to keep grief separated from our lives and only begrudgingly acknowledge its presence in the most obvious of times? “If sequestered pain made a sound,” Stephen Levine suggests, “the atmosphere would be humming all the time.” It feels somewhat daunting to step off into the depths of grief and suffering…Without some measure of intimacy with grief, our capacity to be with any other emotion or experience in our life is greatly compromised.”
He says that grief brings us face to face with “life’s most difficult but essential teaching: everything is a gift, and nothing lasts. To realize this truth is to live with a willingness to live on life’s terms and not try to deny simply what is. Grief acknowledges that everything we love, we will lose. No exceptions.” To this, we add our Christian hope, the hope that Paul lifts up in his letter to the church.
* * *
Matthew 25:1-13
When We Are Waiting
At some point, the bridesmaids stop waiting for the bridegroom, and slip into sleep, perhaps one by one. There is something powerful about waiting for someone, and holding the space for them in expectation. The children on Bus #7 counted on waving each day to an older woman they called “the Grandma in the window.” She lived on their bus route, and she waited by her window every day for the bus to come by. The children waved to her every day as the bus drove past. But one day, the Grandma in the window wasn’t there. The students asked their driver Carol Mitzelfeldt to see what had happened. “Mitzelfeldt went to her house to check on the woman, bringing a bouquet of flowers with her. “I attached a note: ‘To the grandma in the window, we’re thinking of you. Love, the kids on bus 7 and bus driver, Carol,’ ” Mitzelfeldt told The Huffington Post. At the time, neither the bus driver nor the students knew the real name of the “the grandma in the window.” Mitzelfeldt learned from the elderly woman’s husband, Dave, that her name is Louise Edlen, she'd had a stroke a few days prior and was being cared for at a local rehabilitation center. The bus driver relayed the message to the students on the bus, who decided they wanted to take action and do something kind to make the 93-year-old feel better.”
They decided to make a sign, and the “students then posed for a photo of themselves waving out the windows of the bus, just as Edlen sees them each afternoon. Mitzelfeldt had the picture mounted on a large foam board, signed it on behalf of bus 7, and delivered it to Edlen at the care center. Though she struggled to speak because of the stroke, Edlen was able to tell Mitzelfeldt that she loved the children and they mean a lot to her.” When Edlen was able to return home, “fanfare awaited her — Mitzelfeldt and a large group of students put together colorful signs welcoming their “grandma in the window” back home, cheering from the windows and honking horns.”
When someone waits for us, or we wait for them, our importance to each other is made known, and solidifies.
* * *
Matthew 25:1-13
Staying Sane While We Wait
Journalist Daniel Engber posits that the progress bar on our computer screens keeps us all from losing our minds while we wait for our computers to complete a task or load a file. The bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable could have used the first century version of this. They have no such assurance that anything is happening, and so they fall asleep.
Engber says, “Something happened in the 70s that is sometimes referred to as "the software crisis," where suddenly, computers were getting more complicated more quickly than anyone had been prepared for, from a design perspective.” More complex tasks meant that people were waiting longer. So, a graduate student named Brad Myers decided to study this. “He found that it didn't really matter if the percent-done indicator was giving you the accurate percent done. What mattered was that it was there at all. Just seeing it there made people feel better, and that was the most surprising thing. He has all these ideas about what this thing could do. Maybe it could make people relax effectively. Maybe it would allow people to turn away from their machine and do something else of exactly the right duration. They would look and say, "Oh, the progress bar is half done. That took five minutes. So now I have five minutes to send this fax," or whatever people were doing in 1985. Both of those things are wrong. Like, when you see that progress bar, it sort of locks your attention in a tractor beam, and it turns the experience of waiting into this exciting narrative that you're seeing unfold in front of you…” We have the feeling of progress! Perhaps that would have helped the bridesmaids stay awake as they wait!
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating Chris Keating:
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Competing loyalties
Joshua’s words could not be plainer: God expects loyalty and faithfulness. But there still seems to be some confusion on the part of the Israelites. They’re all in when it comes to being loyal to Yahweh; but Joshua knows that true loyalty is much different.
Former FBI Director James Comey was fired by President Trump largely because Trump believed Comey did not demonstrate appropriate fealty toward the president. But Comey held to a differing understanding of loyalty, as shown in the recent Showtime limited TV series, The Comey Rule.
In the series, President Trump invites Comey to the White House for a private dinner. Comey, played by Jeff Daniels, listens as Trump (Brendan Gleeson) releases a wide-ranging tirade that includes television ratings, the alleged Russian sex tape and other allegations. “No one gets treated as unfairly as I do,” the President tells Comey, “It’s disgraceful.” Trump then hints that he could fire Comey at any time.
“It’s true, Mr. President,” says Comey, “you can fire the FBI Director at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all.” He continues by telling the president he wants to keep his job out of his loyalty to the bureau’s mission. The two talk back and forth for a bit, but then Trump interrupts Comey. “I need loyalty,” he tells him, sounding more like a mafia don than a president. “I expect loyalty.”
In his book A Higher Loyalty, Comey said the title of his essays on leadership came to him as a result of that dinner meeting, where in his words “a new president of the United States demanded my loyalty — to him, personally — over my duties as FBI director to the American people."
* * *
Amos 5:18-24
Resetting worship
Amos wants us to know that God is fed up with solemn worship services filled with noisy songs and self-serving offerings. Yahweh is more concerned with the lived-out daily sacrifices involved in striving for justice or hearing the shouts of the liberated than trendy worship tunes. Amos’ vision of justice rolling like mighty streams offers congregations a chance to reflect about the purpose and intent of their worship.
On the one hand, it is easy to point fingers at mega-churches like Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. Lakewood’s services are held in the 16,000 seat arena that used to be home to an NBA franchise. When Osteen’s church took over the arena, they spent upwards of $95 million to make the building feel “more intimate.” That was after the church paid the basketball team $13 million for the property.
Amos’ blood pressure would likely be boiling at such antics. But scaled down versions of the Osteen syndrome happen in much smaller churches, too. As congregations begin re-thinking the way in-person worship will occur post-Covid, Amos could be a helpful conversation starter — particularly in a time when we are confronted by many issues of social justice.
* * *
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
A time to mourn
Among the realities imposed by the pandemic have been restrictions on funeral rituals. Alan Wolfelt, a psychologist and grief expert, has called the pandemic a “nonstop wrecking ball” decimating families and communities, while also placing churches and funeral homes in difficult circumstances.
Wolfelt upholds the importance of rituals and ceremonies. For Christians, liturgies, ceremonies and rituals are helpful in conveying the promise of hope in the face of grief that Paul addresses in 1 Thessalonians 4. Wolfelt says that the coronavirus is wreaking havoc with many of these important rituals:
It’s hard to truly accept the finality of death, but the funeral helps us begin to do so. At first, we accept it with our heads, and only over time do we come to accept it with our hearts.
Unfortunately, the pandemic is wreaking havoc with this “WHY.” Many can’t visit family members who are dying (of Covid-10 or any cause) in the hospital, distant family members can’t travel to be near, and spending time with the body has also become more complicated. It’s much harder to acknowledge the reality of the death when you never see the person who died.
Wolfelt often explains that when mourners “grieve,” (the inward expressions of loss) but do not “mourn” (the outward expressions we experience), sadness can feel unbearable. “Mourning helps us heal,” he writes, “and the funeral is an essential rite of initiation for mourning. It helps us get off to a good start and sets our mourning in motion.” As Paul reminds us, we yearn for the reassurance that offers us the hope of our faith.
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: Give year, O people, to the teaching.
People: We will incline our ears and listen.
Leader: God commanded us to teach them to the young.
People: We will share the teachings of our God.
Leader: Then will all have hope set firmly in God.
People: We will not forget God’s works or cammandments.
OR
Leader: God calls us to hope for a new beginning.
People: We trust in our God who holds our future.
Leader: God calls us to live out our hope in acts of justice.
People: With God’s help we will live into our faith.
Leader: The God who created us calls us to completion.
People: We join in God’s plan for a new creation.
Hymns and Songs:
How Great Thou Art
UMH: 77
PH: 467
AAHH: 148
NNBH: 43
NCH: 35
CH: 33
LBW: 532
ELW: 856
W&P: 51
AMEC: 68
Renew: 250
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
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
He Leadeth Me, O Blessed Thought
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395
Jesus Shall Reign
UMH: 157
H82: 544
PH: 423
NNBH: 10
NCH: 300
CH: 95
LBW: 530
ELW: 434
W&P: 341
AMEC: 96
Renew: 296
This Is My Song
UMH: 437
NCH: 591
CH: 722
ELW: 887
STLT: 159
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
My Faith Looks Up to Thee
UMH: 452
H82: 691
PH: 383
AAHH: 456
NNBH: 273
CH: 576
LBW: 479
ELW: 759
W&P: 419
AMEC: 415
Stand By Me
UMH: 512
NNBH: 318
CH: 629
W&P: 495
AMEC: 420
Dear Jesus, in Whose Life I See
UMH: 468
(Although not in most hymnals this is worth taking a look at and perhaps just using the words.)
Open Our Eyes, Lord
CCB: 77
Renew: 91
Through It All
CCB: 61
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&P: 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 the end as the beginning:
Grant us the grace to find our hope in you
that we might truly have hope based on truth;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the end as you are the beginning. You are the source of creation and you are its completion. Help us to trust in you so that we are filled with true hope in all that will be. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our lack of trust in God that leads to despair and hopelessness.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have lost our hope. We look around us and we are overwhelmed by what we see. We lean on our own strength and we are lost. We have lost our hope because we have failed to base our lives in you. Bring us back to our foundation in you. Amen.
Leader: The God of eternity is the God of hope. Receive God’s love and grace and share those blessings with your neighbors.
Prayers of the People
We adore you, O God, and we bless you. You are the one true constant in an ever changing world.
(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 lost our hope. We look around us and we are overwhelmed by what we see. We lean on our own strength and we are lost. We have lost our hope because we have failed to base our lives in you. Bring us back to our foundation in you.
We thank you for the hope you bring to our lives that is based on you and not on our own powers. We thank you for the reason you have given to us so that we can make your presence known through our lives. We thank you for the blessing of being your children.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your children. We pray for those who struggle without a sense of hope. We pray for those oppressed by poverty, hatred, and violence. We pray for those who face illness and death.
(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
Sometimes we know what we want but we aren’t sure how to get there. We might want to be a doctor or a truck driver; a baseball player or a violinist. But we are not sure what we need to do to make that happen. We know we want to be Jesus’ disciples but we are not sure how to make that happen. We need to just make our way day by day. We move toward becoming a doctor by helping others each day.
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The Immediate Word, November 8, 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.
- Hope and the Politics of Doom by Dean Feldmeyer — Hope is not the Pollyanna notion that everything will be okay if everyone just acts nice. It is the essence of faith and the embodiment of courage.
- Second Thoughts: Other Worldly Hope by Tom Willadsen — While most of us are longing for the end of the campaign, the deep division and hostility between the Blues and Reds make me wonder whether either side will be able to govern.
- Sermon illustrations by Mary Austin and Chris Keating.
- Worship resources by George Reed that focus on hope; faithful steps.
Hope and the Politics of Doomby Dean Feldmeyer
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
A few elections ago a member of my church and I managed to maintain a cordial, even friendly relationship even though our theology and politics were profoundly different. One day he sent me a news clipping that told a beautiful story of a beautifully charitable act that had been undertaken by the candidate for president that he favored.
I was moved by the story and, in an email, I told him so. “I do not doubt that your candidate is a good person,” I said. “In fact, I am sure that he is. I just disagree with his politics.”
Later, in a separate conversation, my friend conceded that he felt the same about the candidate I supported.
Today, as I write these words, we are six days from another presidential election and I don’t think I could say the same thing. I can’t speak for my friend, but I suspect he feels the same.
Writing on October 25, in the Washington Post, political analyst Marc Fisher described the mood of the country as one that “reeks of despair.” Politicians running for election almost always describe the current election as the most important one in history, he says. “But the 2020 vote is taking place with the country in a historically dark mood — low on hope, running on spiritual empty, convinced that the wrong outcome will bring disaster.”
By the time you read this the election will be over and a whole bunch of people from one side or the other will be grieving over the outcome. Many of those grieving souls will be the Christians who populate our pews and it will be our job to sympathize with their feelings of grief, but, at the same time, to encourage them to grieve not as those who have no hope, but as persons whose lives are ruled by hope, and faith, and love.
In the News
The grief that threatens to overwhelm some of our people after the election is not born of politics alone. Politics is a big part of it but it’s also deeper than that.
There’s a house in my community with a big 4’X4’ sign in the front yard that says, simply, “Trump” in big letters then, below that, “Make liberals cry again.”
Nothing about why he’s a good president and will continue to be one. Nothing about what he plans to do, specifically, to rid us of the coronavirus. Nothing about the economy or national security or economic relief or education or healthcare.
It’s as though, for the people in that house, it’s not just about politics. The whole point of the election, for them, is not to win so America can be made better, but to win because in doing so, they can hurt the people with whom they disagree.
Even as we work to hurt each other, the forces of nature also seem to be conspiring to hurt us as much as possible. There’s the coronavirus, of course. Infection rates are increasing faster than they have since March. As of October 30th, the US has over 9 million infections and over 232,000 dead. Break that down and it factors out to a new infection every 1.2 seconds and a death every 107 seconds.
42,000 wildfires have burned over 6.7 million acres on the western end of our nation.
We’ve had so many named storms this year that we’ve run out of names and had to turn to the Greek alphabet for labels. The most recent was hurricane Zed. We’re tied for the most named storms in a single year and we still have a month of hurricane season to go.
The Gross Domestic Product has improved in the second quarter of this year but it’s still more than 3% lower than it was before the pandemic. Unemployment is at 8%, a quarter of Americans can’t pay their bills and congress just threw up their hands and left town. There was plenty of time to confirm a supreme court justice but not enough to agree on a way to help millions of Americans who are drowning in financial problems, none of which are of their own making.
Another mentally ill person, this one an African American, shot and killed by police in Philadelphia and people seem more intent on casting blame than on solving the problem of police as first responders to mental illness calls.
Is it any wonder this election “reeks of despair,” as Marc Fisher says, or that, as a nation, we seem to be “low on hope, running on spiritual empty, convinced that the wrong outcome will bring disaster?”
Locked in our homes, afraid to visit our favorite restaurant or our families for the holidays, we are being told by scientists to wear masks and avoid close contacts with others. We are told by anti-maskers that if we stay home and wear masks when we go out, we are mindless sheep, surrendering to the politics of fear and despair.
But to live hopefully is not to live in a fantasy or a wish dream. Hope, especially that hope that finds its genesis in the gospel, is a strong and robust thing. It lives not in denial but in full awareness of the problems that face us and faith in a God who will lead us through them.
Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians makes that point.
In the Scripture
Biblical scholars tell us that 1 Thessalonians, written in about 50 CE, twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus and 20-30 years before the publication of the first gospel, Mark, is the oldest Christian literature in existence.
It is the first written description of what it looks like to live life according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and, in it, Paul addresses something that he fears is missing in the lives of the Thessalonian Christians.
In chapter three (v. 6) we learn through Timothy’s report that the Christians of Thessalonica are strong in faith and love but that (v.10) something is lacking. Those of us familiar with the 13th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians know immediately what that third thing is. (Cf. Verse 13: “And now abide faith, hope, and love. These three...”) Faith and love they have in abundance. It’s hope that is missing.
In the fourth chapter (vss. 13 ff.) we learn that the Thessalonians are grieving the deaths of some of their members, faithful souls who may very well have died as a result of their steadfast faith in Jesus Christ.
Grief is, of course, a natural and even healthy thing. It allows us to express our sorrows openly and to acknowledge and affirm with one another the heartfelt pain that loss creates. So, grieve, Paul says, but do not grieve as the pagans do, as people without hope. We Christians are people of hope and we grieve as those with hope. We do not give oursleves over to hopelessness and despair. Our grief is real but our hope is no less real than our grief.
We know that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he defeated death on our behalf and, therefore, we, too, will be raised from the dead.
The details of how this is to be accomplished we leave in God’s hands and are comfortable doing so because, as we are people of hope, we are also people of faith. And, being people of faith, we are also people of light and not darkness. (5:4-5).
In the Pulpit
We preach a lot about faith and love.
Hope, not so much. Hope is hard — hard to define, hard to identify, and sometimes, hard to come by.
So we couch it in cliches that help no one and only tend to annoy and anger the grieving person and cause the rest of us to roll our eyes: “Everything happens for a reason;” or “She’s in a better place;” or “God knows what he’s doing;” or “Time heals all wounds;” or, worst of all, “God needed another angel.”
Sometimes our hope deficit has nothing to do with the death of a person but rather the death of an ideal or an expectation or with a personal failure to obtain a goal or achieve a longed-for victory.
We strike out three times in a row and wonder if maybe we were never meant to play baseball. We forget our lines, lines that we knew perfectly well through all the rehearsals but just, inexplicably, left us in the performance and we vow to never take the stage again.
We find oursleves unable to make the dance moves or hit the high notes that were once so easy for us and, disappointed, we give up on dancing or singing. Arthritis stiffens our fingers and slows our playing of the piano or the fiddle. Age slows our steps and shrinks our reach. A friend disappoints or betrays us and we disavow friendship forever.
It’s not just death or politics that brings us to that place where we are so dangerously low on hope and running on spiritual empty. It’s life. All of life.
It is then that we Christians tap into that extra reserve of hope that is ours in Jesus Christ.
The late Peter Gomes was professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School and Minister at Harvard's Memorial Church. In his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News? he says that Christian hope is not merely the optimistic, Pollyanna notion that somehow everything will turn out alright in the end if everyone is just nice like us. Hope is the more rugged view, he says, that even if things don’t turn out alright, we can and will, with God’s help, endure through and beyond those terrible times that disappoint or threaten to undo us.
Hope, he says, can seem a wimpy word, and it can be as flaccid and weak as an overripe banana, yet if we remember, as Paul reminds us, that genuine hope, a hope worth having, is forged upon the anvil of adversity, and that hope and suffering are related through the formation of character, then we will realize that hope is much more than mere optimism. Hope is that which gets us through and beyond when the worst that can happen happens.
The courageous prayer born of hope is grounded in the promise of God to see us through even the most difficult and painful events of our lives.
And we can pray that prayer because we are, you see, people of faith, people of love, people of hope.
Amen.
SECOND THOUGHTSOther Worldly Hope
by Tom Willadsen
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13
In the Scriptures
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Remember, Paul was writing to the Thessalonians who had a very specific question: what is the fate of those who were in Christ, but have died prior to Christ’s return? He was writing to reassure them and to give them hope. There were a lot of non-Jews who had come to Christ in Thessalonica; they were unfamiliar with things that Paul and Christians in other communities — where churches had emerged from synagogues — would take for granted. Paul lays out a sequence for how the resurrection of the dead in Christ will play out. All those in Christ will “meet the Lord,” but those who have already died will be first in line. Those who are living will not die, but be taken up to heaven directly. This is what has come to be called the Rapture, a term that does not appear in the NRSV, though Blondie had a chart-topper by that name in 1981. This word certainly was reassuring to those who believed that their loved ones may have missed out because they died prior to the Parousia. They believed Christ would return at any minute; needless to say, the Thessalonians were not buying green bananas!
Joshua 24:1-3a, 15-25
Choose. Pick one. Perhaps this is an appropriate reading for American Christians to hear five days after the polls closed on our national election. Writing on October 30th I do not know whether the winner of the presidential election will be decided by November 8. There is a very good chance that control of the Senate will also be in doubt. One essential difference between Israel’s public acceptance of Joshua’s preference to serve the Lord and our situation is American voters cast their ballots secretly. The Israelites make their decision and declaration publically and fully aware that there will be consequences if they stray.
Speaking of consequences: while most of us are longing for the end of the campaign, the deep division and hostility between the Blues and Reds make me wonder whether either side will be able to govern, given the rhetoric on both sides that the other side’s election will be catastrophic.
For those who are opting to sit this election out under the “A pox on both your houses; they’re all crooks” gambit, I cite Rush, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Or as Bob Dylan famously sang, “You’re gonna have to serve someone.” There’s no avoiding taking a stand. Joshua takes an unambiguous, public stand in choosing the Lord who brought his people out of slavery; his clarity is refreshing to this weary American.
Matthew 25:1-13
There is a wide variety of wedding customs hinted at in scripture. It appears that Matthew is operating under the practice of the groom leaving his home with an entourage, marrying the bride chez elle, then returning to his home with her people for a huge, perhaps two week, blow-out celebration. No one wants to miss that. There’s a good chance that grooms typically made the journey after nightfall.
A closer look at the text makes things a little less clear. The parable is introduced, “The kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps…” The kingdom is like all ten bridesmaids; some of whom were prepared and took extra oil for their lamps, some of whom did not. Is there inequality in the kingdom of heaven? Room for the prudent and the rash? And what are we to make of the five bridesmaids who were unwilling to share their oil? Were they selfish? Were they wealthier? Were they correct in saying that there would not be enough oil for all ten? Will the kingdom of heaven include those who were admitted to the wedding banquet and those who were locked out? That seems a fair interpretation of the parable, given the introduction. Finally, the conclusion: “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour...” appears to apply to everyone. After all, all ten bridesmaids fell asleep.
In the News
Perhaps it’s refreshing for something other than Covid-19 to be the top news story, but with the deep divisions this election season has exposed in American society, perhaps not. The Electoral College, which effectively equals 53 elections (more if you factor in Nebraska and Maine, who award their electoral votes by congressional district) is a cumbersome, complicated and perhaps antiquated process for determining the outcome of national elections. Each jurisdiction has different systems and rules governing counting ballots. Some of the states whose outcome is likely to determine the outcome of the election — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — do not have mechanisms in place to count ballots promptly. They have also experienced unprecedented numbers of early and mail-in ballots which they are forbidden from counting prior to Election Day. In the same way that the hardest part of cancer is the waiting between diagnosis and beginning treatment, the most tense time of the 2020 election may come after the polls have closed and before the results are released.
Whether the results will be accepted by the losing candidate is another potential complication.
The President has said he plans to hold rallies after election day in states where votes are still being tabulated. The rallies he has staged in the weeks leading up to the election have featured his denunciation of federal health officials and the media. He has repeatedly claimed that the nation has “turned the corner” on responding to Covid-19, despite the Centers for Disease Control announcing October 30’s total of new Covid cases was the highest yet.
In the Sermon
The two greatest fears among adults in the United States are the unknown and the loss of control. Seriously, public speaking, snakes and death have tumbled in recent decades compared to the new Big Two. There is a very good chance the result of the presidential election will be unresolved on Sunday, November 8th. What reassurance, or hope, do you have to offer to your congregation this week? Remember, Paul wanted the Thessalonians not to grieve as others do, but to live with the hope of the Resurrection. Remember, hope is not optimism. Hope has an “in-spite-of” element to it.
You may be tempted to lift up Joshua’s insistent loyalty as a model for your congregation. Be careful of applying his and Israel’s pledge of faithfulness to the God of their liberation to one’s loyalty to one presidential candidate or another. Perhaps a reference to last week’s gospel lesson’s conclusion: rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s, is in order.
You may be tempted to lift up the model of the five bridesmaids who brought extra oil. They were prepared and thus could participate fully in the celebration. Some of your members may be preparing not to join the celebration, but to oppose the newly-elected President and believe it's a faithful response.
Perhaps the wisest course will be to pick up on Paul’s point that being in Christ makes one different. We do not grieve as others do. We live in a hope that the world may not be ready to understand, because it is, indeed, other worldly.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Mary Austin:1 Thessalonians 13-18
Signs of Hope
Paul writes to encourage the people of the Thessalonian church, who have questions about the people around them who have died. Into their time of grief, Paul offers a word of hope. Jeannie Hughes found an unusual source of hope after the death of her son. She recalls, “Snow clung to the wintery branches of the wisteria climbing the trellises in our backyard. Gazing out the kitchen window with my husband, Roger, I thought, I know exactly how it felt to be frozen in that bitterness. We had just returned from burying our 21-year-old son, Steven.” She felt alone in her grief, isolated from God. Her son had been a healthy young adult right up until the accident that took his life.
Hughes recalls, “As I looked out at the yard, my mind flooded with visions of our son over the years: Steven laughing, throwing snowballs at his big sister. Steven climbing the monkey bars on the swing set, sliding down the slide, chasing our dogs. A flutter of wings grabbed my attention. A mourning dove landed on a branch of the wisteria. Then another dove, and another, their pale gray feathers beautiful against the snow.” She commented to her husband that she had never seen a mourning dove in their yard, and her husband, Roger noted, “Seven of them. God’s perfect number.”
I was startled when he began to pray. “Oh, Lord, if these doves are a symbol of your grace, sent on the saddest day of our lives, please let us feel your comfort.”
“At that moment the sky filled with doves; they descended over the yard, lining every branch of the wisteria. With no place left to land, some floated above the cold ground. Soft coos filled the air. We watched in silence, mesmerized, for several minutes, until they suddenly flew back up into the sky, gray wings ablur. “That’s it,” Roger said. “God has given us a sign.” “Of what?” I said. I turned away from the window, feeling numb. How was Roger able to find comfort in the doves when all I saw was a bunch of birds?” The gifts continued. “Over the next two years a few doves visited our late-winter yard, but nothing like on the day of Steven’s funeral. Roger reminded me often of the flock we’d seen, still sure it was a message of consolation, but I felt nothing. The bitterness in my heart had not melted. How I wished I could find the solace that my husband found in his faith!” The path through grief, back toward hope, was long and complicated, and she began to see a grief counselor. “My healing began with a gradual understanding that what had happened to Steven was not God’s fault, but just a terrible accident. I realized that ultimately my tears weren’t for Steven, but for myself, for what I’d lost. I returned to church. I no longer felt isolated from Roger in my grief. I no longer felt isolated from God.”
Grieving is necessary, even for people of faith; and hope allows us to make the journey.
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1 Thessalonians 13-18
Grieve With Hope
Paul reminds the Thessalonian church that faith in Jesus doesn’t save us from grief. He writes to add to their understanding of grief, so they do not grieve “as those who have no hope.” Francis Weller finds that the process of grieving draws us closer to the Spirit. He notes that “The territory of grief is heavy. Even the word carries weight. Grief comes from the Latin, gravis, meaning, heavy, from which we get gravity. We use the term gravitas to speak of a quality in some people who carry the weight of the world with a dignified bearing. And so it is, when we learn to accompany our grief with dignity…No one escapes suffering in this life. None of us is exempt from loss, pain, illness and death. Yet, how is it that we have so little understanding of these essential experiences? How is it we have attempted to keep grief separated from our lives and only begrudgingly acknowledge its presence in the most obvious of times? “If sequestered pain made a sound,” Stephen Levine suggests, “the atmosphere would be humming all the time.” It feels somewhat daunting to step off into the depths of grief and suffering…Without some measure of intimacy with grief, our capacity to be with any other emotion or experience in our life is greatly compromised.”
He says that grief brings us face to face with “life’s most difficult but essential teaching: everything is a gift, and nothing lasts. To realize this truth is to live with a willingness to live on life’s terms and not try to deny simply what is. Grief acknowledges that everything we love, we will lose. No exceptions.” To this, we add our Christian hope, the hope that Paul lifts up in his letter to the church.
* * *
Matthew 25:1-13
When We Are Waiting
At some point, the bridesmaids stop waiting for the bridegroom, and slip into sleep, perhaps one by one. There is something powerful about waiting for someone, and holding the space for them in expectation. The children on Bus #7 counted on waving each day to an older woman they called “the Grandma in the window.” She lived on their bus route, and she waited by her window every day for the bus to come by. The children waved to her every day as the bus drove past. But one day, the Grandma in the window wasn’t there. The students asked their driver Carol Mitzelfeldt to see what had happened. “Mitzelfeldt went to her house to check on the woman, bringing a bouquet of flowers with her. “I attached a note: ‘To the grandma in the window, we’re thinking of you. Love, the kids on bus 7 and bus driver, Carol,’ ” Mitzelfeldt told The Huffington Post. At the time, neither the bus driver nor the students knew the real name of the “the grandma in the window.” Mitzelfeldt learned from the elderly woman’s husband, Dave, that her name is Louise Edlen, she'd had a stroke a few days prior and was being cared for at a local rehabilitation center. The bus driver relayed the message to the students on the bus, who decided they wanted to take action and do something kind to make the 93-year-old feel better.”
They decided to make a sign, and the “students then posed for a photo of themselves waving out the windows of the bus, just as Edlen sees them each afternoon. Mitzelfeldt had the picture mounted on a large foam board, signed it on behalf of bus 7, and delivered it to Edlen at the care center. Though she struggled to speak because of the stroke, Edlen was able to tell Mitzelfeldt that she loved the children and they mean a lot to her.” When Edlen was able to return home, “fanfare awaited her — Mitzelfeldt and a large group of students put together colorful signs welcoming their “grandma in the window” back home, cheering from the windows and honking horns.”
When someone waits for us, or we wait for them, our importance to each other is made known, and solidifies.
* * *
Matthew 25:1-13
Staying Sane While We Wait
Journalist Daniel Engber posits that the progress bar on our computer screens keeps us all from losing our minds while we wait for our computers to complete a task or load a file. The bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable could have used the first century version of this. They have no such assurance that anything is happening, and so they fall asleep.
Engber says, “Something happened in the 70s that is sometimes referred to as "the software crisis," where suddenly, computers were getting more complicated more quickly than anyone had been prepared for, from a design perspective.” More complex tasks meant that people were waiting longer. So, a graduate student named Brad Myers decided to study this. “He found that it didn't really matter if the percent-done indicator was giving you the accurate percent done. What mattered was that it was there at all. Just seeing it there made people feel better, and that was the most surprising thing. He has all these ideas about what this thing could do. Maybe it could make people relax effectively. Maybe it would allow people to turn away from their machine and do something else of exactly the right duration. They would look and say, "Oh, the progress bar is half done. That took five minutes. So now I have five minutes to send this fax," or whatever people were doing in 1985. Both of those things are wrong. Like, when you see that progress bar, it sort of locks your attention in a tractor beam, and it turns the experience of waiting into this exciting narrative that you're seeing unfold in front of you…” We have the feeling of progress! Perhaps that would have helped the bridesmaids stay awake as they wait!
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From team member Chris Keating Chris Keating:Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Competing loyalties
Joshua’s words could not be plainer: God expects loyalty and faithfulness. But there still seems to be some confusion on the part of the Israelites. They’re all in when it comes to being loyal to Yahweh; but Joshua knows that true loyalty is much different.
Former FBI Director James Comey was fired by President Trump largely because Trump believed Comey did not demonstrate appropriate fealty toward the president. But Comey held to a differing understanding of loyalty, as shown in the recent Showtime limited TV series, The Comey Rule.
In the series, President Trump invites Comey to the White House for a private dinner. Comey, played by Jeff Daniels, listens as Trump (Brendan Gleeson) releases a wide-ranging tirade that includes television ratings, the alleged Russian sex tape and other allegations. “No one gets treated as unfairly as I do,” the President tells Comey, “It’s disgraceful.” Trump then hints that he could fire Comey at any time.
“It’s true, Mr. President,” says Comey, “you can fire the FBI Director at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all.” He continues by telling the president he wants to keep his job out of his loyalty to the bureau’s mission. The two talk back and forth for a bit, but then Trump interrupts Comey. “I need loyalty,” he tells him, sounding more like a mafia don than a president. “I expect loyalty.”
In his book A Higher Loyalty, Comey said the title of his essays on leadership came to him as a result of that dinner meeting, where in his words “a new president of the United States demanded my loyalty — to him, personally — over my duties as FBI director to the American people."
* * *
Amos 5:18-24
Resetting worship
Amos wants us to know that God is fed up with solemn worship services filled with noisy songs and self-serving offerings. Yahweh is more concerned with the lived-out daily sacrifices involved in striving for justice or hearing the shouts of the liberated than trendy worship tunes. Amos’ vision of justice rolling like mighty streams offers congregations a chance to reflect about the purpose and intent of their worship.
On the one hand, it is easy to point fingers at mega-churches like Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. Lakewood’s services are held in the 16,000 seat arena that used to be home to an NBA franchise. When Osteen’s church took over the arena, they spent upwards of $95 million to make the building feel “more intimate.” That was after the church paid the basketball team $13 million for the property.
Amos’ blood pressure would likely be boiling at such antics. But scaled down versions of the Osteen syndrome happen in much smaller churches, too. As congregations begin re-thinking the way in-person worship will occur post-Covid, Amos could be a helpful conversation starter — particularly in a time when we are confronted by many issues of social justice.
* * *
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
A time to mourn
Among the realities imposed by the pandemic have been restrictions on funeral rituals. Alan Wolfelt, a psychologist and grief expert, has called the pandemic a “nonstop wrecking ball” decimating families and communities, while also placing churches and funeral homes in difficult circumstances.
Wolfelt upholds the importance of rituals and ceremonies. For Christians, liturgies, ceremonies and rituals are helpful in conveying the promise of hope in the face of grief that Paul addresses in 1 Thessalonians 4. Wolfelt says that the coronavirus is wreaking havoc with many of these important rituals:
It’s hard to truly accept the finality of death, but the funeral helps us begin to do so. At first, we accept it with our heads, and only over time do we come to accept it with our hearts.
Unfortunately, the pandemic is wreaking havoc with this “WHY.” Many can’t visit family members who are dying (of Covid-10 or any cause) in the hospital, distant family members can’t travel to be near, and spending time with the body has also become more complicated. It’s much harder to acknowledge the reality of the death when you never see the person who died.
Wolfelt often explains that when mourners “grieve,” (the inward expressions of loss) but do not “mourn” (the outward expressions we experience), sadness can feel unbearable. “Mourning helps us heal,” he writes, “and the funeral is an essential rite of initiation for mourning. It helps us get off to a good start and sets our mourning in motion.” As Paul reminds us, we yearn for the reassurance that offers us the hope of our faith.
* * * * * *
WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: Give year, O people, to the teaching.
People: We will incline our ears and listen.
Leader: God commanded us to teach them to the young.
People: We will share the teachings of our God.
Leader: Then will all have hope set firmly in God.
People: We will not forget God’s works or cammandments.
OR
Leader: God calls us to hope for a new beginning.
People: We trust in our God who holds our future.
Leader: God calls us to live out our hope in acts of justice.
People: With God’s help we will live into our faith.
Leader: The God who created us calls us to completion.
People: We join in God’s plan for a new creation.
Hymns and Songs:
How Great Thou Art
UMH: 77
PH: 467
AAHH: 148
NNBH: 43
NCH: 35
CH: 33
LBW: 532
ELW: 856
W&P: 51
AMEC: 68
Renew: 250
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
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
He Leadeth Me, O Blessed Thought
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395
Jesus Shall Reign
UMH: 157
H82: 544
PH: 423
NNBH: 10
NCH: 300
CH: 95
LBW: 530
ELW: 434
W&P: 341
AMEC: 96
Renew: 296
This Is My Song
UMH: 437
NCH: 591
CH: 722
ELW: 887
STLT: 159
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
My Faith Looks Up to Thee
UMH: 452
H82: 691
PH: 383
AAHH: 456
NNBH: 273
CH: 576
LBW: 479
ELW: 759
W&P: 419
AMEC: 415
Stand By Me
UMH: 512
NNBH: 318
CH: 629
W&P: 495
AMEC: 420
Dear Jesus, in Whose Life I See
UMH: 468
(Although not in most hymnals this is worth taking a look at and perhaps just using the words.)
Open Our Eyes, Lord
CCB: 77
Renew: 91
Through It All
CCB: 61
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&P: 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 the end as the beginning:
Grant us the grace to find our hope in you
that we might truly have hope based on truth;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the end as you are the beginning. You are the source of creation and you are its completion. Help us to trust in you so that we are filled with true hope in all that will be. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our lack of trust in God that leads to despair and hopelessness.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have lost our hope. We look around us and we are overwhelmed by what we see. We lean on our own strength and we are lost. We have lost our hope because we have failed to base our lives in you. Bring us back to our foundation in you. Amen.
Leader: The God of eternity is the God of hope. Receive God’s love and grace and share those blessings with your neighbors.
Prayers of the People
We adore you, O God, and we bless you. You are the one true constant in an ever changing world.
(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 lost our hope. We look around us and we are overwhelmed by what we see. We lean on our own strength and we are lost. We have lost our hope because we have failed to base our lives in you. Bring us back to our foundation in you.
We thank you for the hope you bring to our lives that is based on you and not on our own powers. We thank you for the reason you have given to us so that we can make your presence known through our lives. We thank you for the blessing of being your children.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your children. We pray for those who struggle without a sense of hope. We pray for those oppressed by poverty, hatred, and violence. We pray for those who face illness and death.
(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
Sometimes we know what we want but we aren’t sure how to get there. We might want to be a doctor or a truck driver; a baseball player or a violinist. But we are not sure what we need to do to make that happen. We know we want to be Jesus’ disciples but we are not sure how to make that happen. We need to just make our way day by day. We move toward becoming a doctor by helping others each day.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, November 8, 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.
