A great deal of the wrangling in this week’s gospel text is centered on the issue of who is deserving of God’s grace. The Pharisees maintain that the blind man whose sight was restored by Jesus was a sinner, and therefore not worthy of being healed of his affliction. Their first impulse is to discount the veracity of the healing, and then to question its validity as well as Jesus’ credentials and methods. The Pharisees’ attitude seems to be a narrow one in which access to God’s grace and favor must be earned: “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him” (John 9:31).
In this installment of The Immediate Word, team member Leah Lonsbury finds that the same issue of inclusiveness is as timely as ever; she notes several items in the past week’s headlines that are primarily about what restrictions we place on those who are different in some way. While observing that the sizes of the circles we draw around ourselves are ever-changing, Leah also asks us to consider: How do we determine the size of those circles? How do we judge who is worthy of receiving something that should be open to all? Are we too focused on excluding those who we think are somehow not deserving of full membership in our society, or too interested in protecting our economic position by keeping at arm’s length those who might take our jobs and our livelihood? Leah reminds us that it’s exactly this type of mindset that Jesus excoriates in the Pharisees. After noting that his basic purpose -- “I came into this world... so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind” -- Jesus curtly tells the Pharisees that their sin remains. It’s a stunning juxtaposition: Jesus contrasts the unworthy outsider who now sees with the righteous insiders who are as spiritually blind as ever. That’s a powerful illustration of how God’s grace is inclusive -- available to everyone no matter their station in life -- rather than exclusively available only to those who meet the restrictions established by the religious and social elite. Moreover, Leah asks us to think deeply about how Jesus might heal us in the same way as the formerly blind man. What do our “before” and “after” snapshots look like?
Team member Dean Feldmeyer shares some additional thoughts on the First Samuel text and Samuel’s task of anointing the king that God has selected. Dean makes an interesting comparison to the annual ritual of filling out brackets for the NCAA basketball tournament. It’s a popular pastime -- it seems that almost every workplace has some sort of pool going, and this year Warren Buffett’s offer of a $1 billion prize to anyone who could produce a “perfect” bracket, correctly picking the winners of all 63 tournament games, added the mirage of an additional pot of gold (beyond merely winning the office pool) lurking at the end of the rainbow. Dean notes that many people follow “chalk,” filling out their brackets with the favorites -- and Samuel certainly seemed to expect that’s how things would go for him. But “March Madness” is notorious for producing stunning upsets -- and there was no greater upset than God’s selection of the young and untested David; it’s certainly not what anyone would have predicted. But as Dean points out, that’s always the case when our judgments and selections are based on our human limitations -- it’s impossible to pick a “perfect” bracket. Indeed, how we choose to fill out our brackets often provides a glimpse at how we make other choices in life. Do we pick with our heads, carefully studying the odds, or do we pick with our hearts? What light do we bring? And most importantly, when we make our choices in life, are we doing so with the aid of God’s light, allowing us to see what would otherwise be hidden from us?
How Wide Do We Draw Our Circles?
by Leah Lonsbury
1 Samuel 16:1-3, Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
If you sift through the world and national news, delve into local politics, think for a second about our church communities, and examine interactions with friends and family a little more closely, it’s not hard to see that a good deal of our lives and time is taken up with the task of deciding who is in and who is out.
Last week there was a decision striking down Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriages, allowing gay and lesbian couples there to marry for a brief period before they were left in limbo when an appeals court temporarily stayed the ruling.
American schools are still failing students of color, according to a report released recently by the U.S. Department of Education.
The New York City Fire Department settled a suit last week, agreeing to distribute nearly $100 million in back pay and benefits to minorities whose efforts to join the department were thwarted by institutional biases.
The founder of Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, died this week. Phelps and his followers gained notoriety for their protest efforts against fallen soldiers, victims of hate crimes, and just about everybody else at one time or another.
Where and how will we draw our circles? How do we decide who will have access to society’s benefits and basic human rights?
Echoes of these questions arise in our texts for this week as well. The Pharisees seek to draw their circles in tight and narrow the number of those who are “deserving” of healing and God’s grace and favor. Jesus, however, challenges and stretches their vision. “I came into this world,” he announces... to turn things upside-down and blow your categories and your circles wide open.
God’s grace, healing, and love, Jesus says, are available to all who would see in a new way. Or those who, as our text from Ephesians says, walk in a new light. For God doesn’t judge as the social or religious elite or the world’s powerful and mighty do. God “does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
How will we see?
How will we walk?
How will God find the state of our hearts?
How wide will we draw our circles to offer grace and healing in the pattern of Jesus?
In the News
The past week’s news cycle is full of our circles. We expand them a bit, and then yank them back close to us. We are inspired to open ourselves, but then find we are afraid of “the other.” Our circles seem to breathe, expanding and contracting as we go about deciding who is in and who is out; who “deserves” things like civil rights, education, jobs, enough to eat, and a safe place to live; and who may do God’s work and receive God’s grace.
At the same time I posted the introduction to this article last weekend, my clergy friend in Michigan was standing outside the county clerk’s office performing marriages for gay and lesbian couples who had lined up to put their new rights to work. Less than 24 hours later, those newlyweds had been shoved into legal limbo with a temporary stay due to an appeal by the state. When the stay expires on Wednesday, more gay and lesbian couples will likely join their ranks. And before you preach on Sunday, the width of the circle of whose love we consider worthy or recognizable could very likely be adjusted again.
Since last Friday’s release of the Department of Education’s survey on civil rights in schools, the media and those who work in the crossroads of education and civil rights have had some time to sift through its findings. Consider the following facts that have come to light over the weekend and see if your view of and hope for the circle labeled “American educational opportunities” shrinks like mine does, followed closely by “future opportunities,” “job readiness and prospects,” and “well-being and economic stability”:
* While black children represent only 18% of preschool enrollment nationally, they make up 42% of students suspended once, and nearly half of students who are suspended more than once.
* In districts with more than one high school, nearly one in four reported a teacher salary gap of $5,000 between schools with the most and least black or Latino students. Black students are nearly four times as likely as their white counterparts to attend a school where less than 80% of their school’s teachers are certified. Latinos are twice as likely as whites to attend such schools.
* Nationwide, only half of all high schools offer calculus and 63% offer physics. Many other high schools don’t offer more than one of the typical core courses in math and science, like geometry or biology. Fewer than half of American Indian students attend a school that offers a full complement of math and science classes, compared to 81% of Asian-American students and 71% of white students.
* A quarter of the schools with the largest populations of black, Latino, and Native American students don’t offer Algebra II. Access to AP courses is also in limited supply among the country’s historically oppressed minority groups.
Wade Henderson, president of The Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, had this to say after digesting the report: “For the first time in the history of this country, a detailed picture of the multiple ways too many schools are harming our children is now available to every parent, educator, and concerned citizen. Predictably and quite shamefully, that picture is not at all pretty.” Henderson said the report highlights what he considers as essentially two education systems -- “one that works well for privileged students, and one that is failing minority and low-income students, English learners, and students with disabilities.”
I watched this play out at my son’s school today when I received the report that my white child had been selected to attend the district’s magnet program for gifted students next year. I digested this news as I passed his African-American peer sitting in the front office, waiting for a parent after being suspended. When I went to check the lost and found rack, a special education class made up entirely of Latino, immigrant, and refugee children passed by, supervised by a staff member with “paraprofessional” status in the district. This year she will be paid $12,000 for her full-time work.
Again from Henderson --
The continued failure of states and local school boards to eradicate these inequalities will ensure that millions of Americans’ dreams will be crushed and they will be effectively shut out of the increasingly high-skilled 21st-century world economy.
The revelations highlighted in the report constitute, according to Henderson, “the greatest moral challenge of our time.”
Newly inaugurated New York mayor Bill de Blasio would tell you that this moral challenge must extend to cover how we draw our circles in terms of employment as well. Shortly after taking office, de Blasio announced several civil rights initiatives aimed at settling racial disparities in the city’s government. One of those was the settlement announced last week that awards almost $100 million in back pay and benefits to minorities passed over by the New York Fire Department (NYFD) because of their race. So the circle labeled “job opportunities” seems to be expanding, with this announcement and other reforms put in place to ensure equal opportunity with the NYFD. But then we have to take into consideration how change on the governing level trickles down to the streets, specifically those with firehouses on them. The Vulcan Society that worked with the minority applicants who brought the suit still seems skeptical. The New York Times reports:
Though members of the Vulcan Society and their legal advisers praised Tuesday’s settlement, they said it was still unclear how the reforms would translate within the city’s 200 or so firehouses, where efforts to diversify have been met with skepticism and sometimes hostility.
“We’ve had some really great court decisions in this case that required the city to change a lot of things,” said Darius Charney, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights who has worked with the Vulcan Society. “But until those changes filter down into the firehouse and we see a change in the culture of the firehouse, a lot of this stuff is really not going to take hold.”
And that circle seems to draw right back in to where it started.
Pastor Frank Schaefer, the United Methodist pastor who was famously defrocked by his denomination for performing his son’s same-sex marriage, might have a different take lately on the “job opportunities” circle as well as the “those who may do God’s work” and “those who may receive God’s grace” circles. In December 2013, all three of these circles seemed to grow for Schaefer when Bishop Minerva G. Carcano of the UMC’s California-Pacific Conference offered him a job. This past weekend, however, Pastor Frank made the following comment in his sermon at First UMC in Boulder, Colorado, making one wonder what he’s up to. Is the circle expanding or is it shrinking? Schaefer said: “Please don’t call yourself a Christian if you judge people based on their sexual orientation or identity. For Christ, the founder of Christianity, never judged them. In fact, he even said: ‘Judge not, lest you be judged!’ ”
About as far as you can get from Pastor Frank is the recently deceased Fred Phelps, who loved to draw his circles in tightly -- so tightly, in fact, that they really only encompassed the church he started made up almost entirely of his own family. Steven Petrow, a writer, former president of the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association, and one-time object of Phelps’ ire, wrote in the Washington Post to encourage a somewhat ornery, circle-expanding response to Phelps’ passing:
So, with Phelps’s passing, I suggest we bombard Westboro Baptist with sympathy cards and prayers. Or, as a friend of mine tells me, “Drive your enemies really crazy: Love them.” Okay, maybe not love, but at least not hate. Never hate.
This weekend, Phelps’ church staged their first protest since his passing at a Lorde concert in Kansas City. Attacking New Zealand teenage singer Lorde because she “has not been taught and will not teach young women to be sober and godly,” and holding circle-shrinking signs with sentiments like “GOD H8S LUKEWARM CHRISTIANS,” the protestors were met with an unexpected response. Across the street, young people held up a simple black-and-white sign that read: “SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS.”
And the circle of grace grows.
In the Scriptures
In our passage from John’s gospel we see a number of characters working on their circles, just like the people in the news reports above are doing and just like we do every day. That part’s not surprising. What is surprising is the direction they’re headed with their circles because of who they are and the parts they have played in the formerly blind man’s life.
The community members in the story don’t even recognize the man who has lived in their midst since his birth. Deborah Kapp writes of this in Feasting on the Word (Year A, Vol. 2, p. 118):
This is so odd... his neighbors have interacted with him, perhaps helped him cross the street or draw water; they have worshiped with him. Why do they fail to recognize him after he is healed? Is it because the only marker of his identity was his blindness?
Perhaps their own blindness to one who should be familiar to them is due to the fact that they drew the man out of their circles from day one. When we can only see what makes us different, it’s hard to look beyond the dissonance for what we hold in common -- our humanity. This kind of blindness shows up again and again in our biblical stories, and it also plays a part in much of the conflict in our lives and our world. How often are our problems with each other rooted in differences in socioeconomic status, race, religious affiliation, political party, education, and/or national identity? How well do we really see each other for who we truly are -- God’s beloved?
The religious authorities in our passage are quick to draw the man out of their circles because he threatens the story they are trying to tell, the control they have over the narrative that shapes the religious identity of the community (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2, p. 118). In a time when the religious authorities were the authorities, this control meant everything. Their thirst for it causes their blindness. Jesus cannot be the hero of the story. He must be the sinner so the religious leaders can cast him aside and maintain their positions of power. How often are we made blind by our own ambitions and need for control? What does this to do to our vision of ourselves, of others, of God? How does this show up in our churches, our homes, and our own hearts?
The man’s parents draw their own son out of their circle when they let their fear of all they have to lose overshadow their care and responsibility for their own son. When they should be celebrating his miraculous healing, they are looking for ways to shake him off and stay out of the line of fire. Deborah Kapp writes of this, “The parents’ fear overwhelms their joy, and they abandon their son to the authorities” (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2, p. 120).
The parents’ fear blinds and limits them, because it closes them off where joy would have burst them wide open, ready to receive and understand their son in a new way.
The vision-giver, the ultimate circle-expander is Jesus. It is Jesus who will transform, heal, and stand with the man and with us so that the tiny, isolating circles we have drawn (or others have drawn us out of) can no longer obscure our vision. The one who blows our circles wide open lets the light in and reminds us of what we are after in this Lenten experience. We are seeking the healing and transformative presence of Christ, the presence that leads us from the darkness of blindness to the light of “all that is good and right and true” (Ephesians 5:9) and makes us live for more than our own desires and devices. Christ’s presence liberates us from our narrow, inward-facing blindness and reorients us outward with eyes made new by Christ’s light. Christ’s presence illumines and grows the circle of what and whom we can see, understand, and draw close to in love. For there is work we must do, the work of the One who sent Jesus and who sends us (John 9:4), and that work means fixing our circles in wide and generous ways. The voice that calls Samuel away from his own paralyzing grief and toward the establishment of a new kin-dom and future for God’s people also calls us. Like Samuel, we have a hard time believing such growth and expansion is possible, and so we too ask “How can I go?” And the voice answers, “I will show you what you shall do” (1 Samuel 16:2-3).
In the Sermon
This week, the preacher might consider...
* Examining the types of blindness (seeing only differences, the grab for power, and the paralyzing grip of fear) that show up in our gospel reading. Think with the congregation about how your congregation shows up in that story, and how your church community might begin to regain its sight and grow its circles as a result.
* Preaching about the “before and after” of the formerly blind man’s story. He has a hard time explaining what exactly happened with Jesus in a way that will satisfy his questioners, but what he can clearly verbalize are the before and after pieces. We often focus on our moments of conversion and call -- hard experiences to articulate, explain, and communicate in ways that express the power they involve. What we can do in a much more convincing and accurate way is bear witness to our before and after. What does our transformation look like? What has changed? How have our circles grown? How have we moved from darkness to light? Therein lies the transformative power of a relationship with Jesus -- the story we are sent to tell with our lives. (See Anna Carter Florence’s work in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2, pps. 117-121.)
* Thinking with the congregation about verses 13-14 in the text from Ephesians: “...but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.” During this Lenten season, what is becoming visible for the individuals in the pews? What is becoming visible about the church community? How does that visibility create light? How might this visibility and light have affected the characters in the formerly blind man’s community, had they let Jesus’ light work on them?
* Encouraging a “circle view” of the activities of our daily lives and of the church’s life as a whole. How might our decisions and living be affected if we consider how we are expanding or shrinking our circles of inclusion by what we say and do? What does Jesus teach us about what our circles should look like?
SECOND THOUGHTS
Biblical Bracketology
by Dean Feldmeyer
1 Samuel 16:1-13
In the News
It’s “March Madness” -- and if you haven’t already figured it out, “bracketology” is the process of predicting the field of the NCAA basketball tournament... indeed, the very competition in the throes of which we currently reside. The term was coined in the late 1990s to describe the work of Joe Lunardi (aka “Joey Brackets”), formerly the editor of the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook and currently the resident “bracketologist” for ESPN, whose specialty is correctly identifying all 68 teams that will make the post-season tournament as well as their seeding. (Lunardi has inspired a cottage industry on the internet, as this year’s Bracket Matrix project tracked the predictions of 121 different “bracketologists.”)
But while that was the initial (and primary) usage of the term, it is also more broadly applied to the process used by the general public to fill in their brackets once the actual field has been announced on “Selection Sunday,” in an effort to predict who will be the winner. These brackets are very popular in office betting pools, family gatherings, and gambling meccas like Las Vegas and Atlantic City. President Obama even enjoys getting in on the action; ESPN annually airs a brief segment filmed at the White House with his selections -- appropriately dubbed “Barack-etology.” And this year the excitement has been elevated as several banks and insurance companies have offered a million-dollar prize to the person who gets every single game correct. To heighten the suspense even further, Warren Buffett has upped the prize for a perfect bracket to one billion dollars.
At the beginning of the tournament, there were various estimates of the odds of winning Buffett’s cash -- all of them extremely long. Based on the theory that picking a perfect bracket requires navigating 63 random selections correctly, DePaul University mathematician Jeff Bergen pegged the odds at approximately 9.2 quintillion to one. (That’s a nine, and then a two, and then, well... a whole bunch of zeroes -- 17, to be exact.) If you know something about basketball, then Bergen says it’s more like 128 billion to one. Noted election forecaster and data journalist Nate Silver (who started his career studying baseball statistics) placed them at around 7.4 billion to one... or just 42 times worse than your chances of winning the Powerball lottery.
When three-quarters of the games in the opening round of 64 had been played this past Friday afternoon (3/21/14), 16 registered entrants were still in the running for Buffett’s jackpot -- but by the time the evening’s games wrapped up and 32 teams remained (just over a third of the way through the tournament), not a single unblemished bracket was left.
Anyway, in addition to his ESPN presence Mr. Lunardi teaches a college course in the art and science of bracketology at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
Here in southern Ohio (where I live), students at the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business can also take a two-credit course in bracketology. Professor Mike Magazine and Lindner alum Paul Bessire have teamed up to teach the course. Magazine, a self-proclaimed “math geek,” is a professor of Operations, Business Analytics, and Information Systems, while Bessire runs the popular predictionmachine.com, a website that uses analytics to predict sports games.
Basically, Magazine and Bessire use complex mathematical formulas to analyze the performances of the 68 basketball teams that have won places in or been invited to “the big dance.” Then they use that data to predict who will win. In the past four years they have correctly predicted the winner of the tournament... once. That doesn’t keep them from being the go-to guys for the voracious sports media looking for a story. The two have been featured in the Washington Post and on ESPN, Fox Sports, and the CBS Sports Network, as well as the syndicated TV show The List, for their advice on college hoops.
Me, I don’t need complicated mathematical formulas to be right 25% of the time. My bracketological method is much more, well, let’s call it “intuitive.” For instance:
My wife and I both graduated from the University of Cincinnati... so I picked the Bearcats to make it to at least the Elite Eight, probably the Final Four. (Of course, they crashed out of the tournament in their opening game.)
My son, his wife, and my daughter all graduated from Ohio State... so I took the Buckeyes to the Sweet Sixteen, maybe even the Elite Eight with a little luck. (Likewise, they were defeated in their first tilt -- suffering the indignity of falling to in-state rival Dayton.)
Being an Ohio State fan prohibited me from taking any team with “Michigan” in its name past the third round. Other Big Ten schools will, of course, do well in varying degrees.
I put St. Joseph’s in the Elite Eight because the coach’s grandson reminds me of my grandson, and they have a relationship not unlike mine with Luke. (The Hawks also lost in the first round.)
Speaking of my grandson Luke, I let him choose about half of my brackets -- and he based his choices on the schools’ colors. He’s partial to primary colors and anything with orange.
I have lots of friends who are Louisville and/or Kentucky fans, so I put those teams near the center just to keep my friends from being mad at me.
I was on the fence about Western Michigan and North Carolina Central. They are what Bobby Knight called “directional” schools, which is bad. On the other hand, there’s always a “Cinderella” team that goes further than anyone expected -- so why not one of these two, right? (As it turned out, both Western Michigan and North Carolina Central were steamrolled in their games; the teams pulling the biggest first round upsets were Mercer, Harvard, North Dakota St., and Stephen F. Austin. But heading into this week’s Sweet Sixteen games, the team being fitted for Cinderella’s glass slippers is the Dayton Flyers, who knocked off favorites Ohio State and Syracuse.)
And the winner of it all will be Florida, because they are crazy good and Florida teams win all the big tournaments and bowl games about 90% of the time. But on my bracket they’ll have to fight their way past Cincinnati first! (So much for that confrontation...)
See, choosing isn’t really all that tough. Even my grandson can do it.
In the Scriptures
In this week’s lesson from the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Samuel is sent by God to Bethlehem to do some choosing. He is to go to the family of a guy named Jesse in order to anoint someone from that family to be the new king replacing Saul, who has gone completely off the grid with madness and disobedience.
Yahweh, however, is playing things pretty close to the vest. Exactly which person from that family is to be anointed will be revealed in due time. This has to be a secret mission, because if Saul finds out about it he’ll be angry, maybe even to the point of having Samuel killed; that’s how crazy the king has lately become. So Samuel takes a cow with him and tells everyone that he’s going to make a sacrifice to the Lord.
When he gets to Bethlehem the elders of the city are less than jubilant to see him. “Do you come peacefully?” they ask. By which they mean, “You aren’t here to cause trouble, are you?” Apparently other prophets have come through Bethlehem and left problems in their wake.
Samuel assures them that he is only there on his way to make a sacrifice to the Lord. To prove his good intentions he invites them to come with him, but only Jesse and seven of his eight sons come along.
When they get to the place of the sacrifice, Jesse introduces his sons, starting with the oldest, Eliab, who is tall and good-looking, probably kind of like Chris Hemsworth, the actor who plays Thor.
Jesse figures that this guy has got to be the next king -- I mean, look at him... a number one seed for sure.
But God has different ideas. Remember, God chose Saul because he was tall and good-looking. That didn’t work out so well, so God’s got other plans this time. The next king will be chosen not by what’s on his outside but what’s on his inside, specifically, what’s in his heart. God tells Samuel to move on.
Next comes Abinadab, more of the Captain America type, I’m betting.
But God says, “Nope, not him.”
Shammah. Nope.
Sons four, five, six, and seven are introduced. We are never given their names, but when I do this scene as a skit with Vacation Bible School, we call them Bob, Carl, Ray, and Sylvester.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Now there’s this awkward silence while everyone stands around waiting for the next thing. Samuel says to Jesse, “Is that it? Do you have any other sons?”
Jesse and the boys kind of look at each other and mumble and shuffle their feet, and then Jesse clears his throat and says, “Well, there’s, uh, David.”
“David?” says Samuel. “Well, where is he?”
“Up in his room playing air guitar. Says he wants to be a songwriter.” The other sons snicker and make air quotes with their fingers when Jesse says “songwriter.” This David kid is a fifteen seed, fourteen tops.
Samuel throws them a look and makes it clear that he’s not going anywhere until he’s seen all the boys, so a couple of them hustle off to bring back the “songwriter.”
Samuel sees him coming and he realizes in an instant that this is the one, even if he is good-looking. Blond, fair-skinned, blue eyes, with charisma just dripping off him and smarts to spare. Plays the lyre like Jimi Hendrix played the guitar. And if that isn’t enough, God says to Samuel, “That’s him.”
So Samuel anoints David and the Spirit of God descends upon him and things go very well for him from then on. It’s a Cinderella story! (Well, except for the Bathsheba thing, but that’s a story for a different time.)
In the Pulpit
Much fun to be had here. If the worship service is informal enough, I often get kids up to act this one out as I tell the story... maybe even a couple of adults too.
The story is clear enough that it doesn’t require much explanation. Let it explain itself.
The indicative: Our mechanisms for choosing are imperfect, often tainted and corrupted by our humanness. That’s not a bad thing necessarily, it’s just the way it is. We are seduced by good looks, by human loyalties, by personal preferences. As my grandson Luke said after the Cincinnati and Ohio State games: “Pop, we made some very bad choices.”
The imperative: Our emotions, our fractured ability to reason objectively, should always inform our choices. But they should not rule them. When making important choices in our lives we would do well to bring God into the equation via scripture. God does not choose according to what is easy or flattering, what makes us look good or feel good about ourselves. As the old axiom says: If the message you get from God is exactly the one you want, you probably heard it wrong. God chooses according to our hearts, what we need, and what we truly are. God chooses according to God’s purpose, and our prayer is always that God’s purpose might be ours as well.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
John 9:1-41
Last December, Bob Barker -- the host of television’s The Price Is Right from 1972 to 2007 --was invited back onto the show by current host Drew Carey to celebrate his 90th birthday. Barker had no difficulty fitting into his former role when he announced his signature words to the studio audience: “Come on down!”
Application: These are the words that Jesus spoke to the blind man and all those in need of healing: “Come on down!”
*****
1 Samuel 16:1-13
In a Frank & Ernest comic strip, Snow White is standing in the company of the seven dwarfs. With an exasperated look on her face, she says, “Happy, Dopey, Bashful, Grumpy... It’s like living in a house full of mood swings.”
Application: As Jesse paraded his sons before Samuel, the prophet may have seemingly found himself in a house full of mood swings as each one displayed an attribute unsuitable for the Lord. Samuel’s exasperation may not have at all been unlike the feeling expressed by Snow White.
*****
1 Samuel 16:1-13
The police interview tapes from Justin Bieber’s January arrest for drag racing in a rented Lamborghini while he had alcohol, marijuana, and Xanax in his body have now been released to the public. Bieber confronted the interrogating officer at the police station, saying that at 19 he was only out having a good time. He then asked what the officer was doing at the age of 19, to which the patrolman answered that he wasn’t driving a Lamborghini. Bieber then retorted, “Yeah, well, I bet you didn’t have millions of dollars in your bank account either.”
Application: As Jesse’s sons passed before Samuel, it was the attribute of humility that he sought.
*****
1 Samuel 16:1-13
The average salary for a major league baseball player in 2013 was $3.39 million (according to a report from the MLB players association). The highest-paid players were designated hitters at $10.5 million; the lowest-compensated position group was relief pitchers at $2.2 million. Meanwhile, the average U.S. wage for 2012 was $42,498 (according to the Social Security Administration).
Application: Samuel had the discretion not to judge those who passed before him by the standards that society placed on them, but instead to look into what was a priceless assessment -- that is, spiritual character.
*****
Ephesians 5:8-14
George Will recently penned a commentary for the Washington Post regarding the inefficiency of government today, much of which can be redirected from the politician to the voter. Will wrote: “The problem of ignorance is unlikely to be ameliorated by increasing voter knowledge because the demand for information, not the supply of it, is the major constraint on political knowledge.”
Application: Paul had the knowledge of a new life in Christ. Paul did not have a shortage of information; he had the problem of creating within the people the desire to learn and accept the message.
***************
From team member Chris Keating:
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ukraine’s Next President: Rabbit, Boxer, or Candy King?
God directed Samuel to seek the next king of Israel without regard to the person’s appearance or stature, for “the Lord does not see as mortals do.”
It’s a similar story in Ukraine, where a 39-year-old lawyer has become one of the world’s youngest leaders. Arseny Yatsenyuk, a bespectacled yet outspoken economist and pro-Western opposition leader, is the country’s acting prime minister. Yatsenyuk hardly resembles the prototypical European “tough guy” politician, and he is nicknamed “Rabbit” because of his resemblance to the rabbit in the Russian animated version of “Winnie the Pooh.”
Yet many consider Yatsenyuk to be the right leader at the right time. (His credentials include considerable diplomatic experience and a stint as minister of economics in Crimea.) In another comparison to the biblical David, Yatsenyuk will face some Goliath-like opponents in the upcoming presidential election. These include former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko and candy-making billionaire Petro Poroshenko, aka the “Willy Wonka of Ukraine.”
*****
1 Samuel 16:1-13
The Unexpected Leader
Jesse didn’t imagine that God would anoint his youngest son, David, as king -- so he kept him out in the field. Despite his good looks, David wasn’t on anyone’s short list for the position. Leaders sometimes emerge in unexpected ways. In his book Leadership Is an Art, businessperson and writer Max DePree broadens traditional definitions of hierarchical leadership to include something he terms “roving leadership.” (This link applies the concept to military leadership, but it provides a helpful quote of DePree’s idea.) According to DePree, roving leaders are “those indispensable people in our lives who are there when we need them.” In many ways, roving leaders are the unexpected women and men who rise to specific challenges and help others to follow.
*****
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Picking the Winner
When it comes to picking the NCAA basketball tournament winner, perhaps the best bracketologists would follow the pack -- the rat pack, that is.
Someone over at sports network ESPN has produced a video showing 32 dwarf rats maneuvering their way through the tournament brackets. ESPN employees were contemplating the maze-like nature of the tournament and landed on the idea of filming a pack of furry rodents as they made their way to the center. March Madness ensues as the critters run past each other, climb over walls, and crawl their way to win the, uh, “big cheese.”
“We were bouncing some ideas around about the unpredictability and craziness of a bracket, and how it also looks like a maze,” ESPN marketing manager Won Kim told the Hartford Courant. “Then we landed on a ‘eureka’ moment of, how about small animals in a bracket maze. We went with dwarf rats, and the name ‘Rat Bracket’ was born.”
By the way, according to the rats Florida takes it all. No animals were hurt in the making of the video -- except for a few broken hearts.
*****
John 9:1-41
Seeing What Is Important
For John, the distinction between “seeing” and “not seeing” is critical. Jesus uses the experience of healing a man born blind to point out the relative blindness of those whose eyes function correctly but whose spiritual vision is deficient. The Pharisees are puzzled, asking themselves, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”
Twelve-year old New Zealander Louis “Louie” Corbett understands the critical distinction between seeing and not seeing. Corbett has a rapid form of retinitis pigmentosa, and is quickly losing his eyesight. His parents decided to help Corbett fill his world with beautiful images by taking an international sightseeing tour. Louie put together an ocular bucket list, and included Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Empire State Building -- and a Boston Celtics basketball game. Through a series of amazing coincidences, the “bucket list” trip came together perfectly. A neighbor from New Zealand who just happens to be the CEO of a Boston-based software company made the dream trip a reality. Stories of the trip flashed across social media. The wife of the owner of the Boston Celtics just happened to see the tweet. She made her family’s seats available to the Corbetts for a game, where a choir from a school for visually impaired children sang the national anthem.
For Louie and his parents, seeing was believing.
But even seeing “Welcome Louie” flash on the jumbotron at Boston’s TD Garden might not have been the highlight of the trip. The Corbetts also were able to visit the prestigious Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, where researchers are engaged in finding a way of reversing Louie’s condition. In the meantime, he has truly seen some of the best the world has to offer.
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: God is our shepherd, we shall not want.
People: God makes us lie down in green pastures;
Leader: God leads us beside still waters;
People: God restores our soul.
Leader: God leads us in right paths.
People: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life.
OR
Leader: The God who creates us calls us into worship.
People: We come to praise the one who made us and all that is.
Leader: The God who made us one calls us into communion with God and with one another.
People: We join together as God’s children, caring for one another.
Leader: The God who redeems the world calls us to join in the work.
People: We gladly join to heal the brokenness of all God’s creation.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
“All People That on Earth Do Dwell”
found in:
UMH: 75
H82: 377, 378
PH: 220, 221
NNBH: 36
NCH: 7
CH: 18
LBW: 245
ELA: 883
W&P: 601
AMEC: 73
STLT: 370
“Your Love, O God”
found in:
UMH: 120
CH: 71
“For the Healing of the Nations”
found in:
UMH: 428
NCH: 576
CH: 668
W&P: 621
“Let There Be Peace on Earth”
found in:
UMH: 431
CH: 677
W&P: 614
“Jesu, Jesu”
found in:
UMH: 432
H82: 602
PH: 367
NNBH: 498
NCH: 600
ELA: 708
W&P: 273
“Our Parent, by Whose Name”
found in:
UMH: 447
LBW: 357
ELA: 640
“In Christ There Is No East or West”
found in:
UMH: 548
H82: 529
PH: 439, 440
AAHH: 398, 399
NNBH: 299
NCH: 394, 395
CH: 687
LBW: 259
ELA: 650
W&P: 600, 603
AMEC: 557
“Lord, Speak to Me”
found in:
UMH: 463
PH: 426
NCH: 531
ELA: 676
W&P: 593
“We Are One in Christ Jesus” (“Somos uno en Cristo”)
found in:
CCB: 43
“Unity”
found in:
CCB: 59
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who comes among us and disturbs the way we classify people: Grant us the courage to look at how limited our circles are and how wide the circles are that you draw, that we may truly be disciples of the one you sent us; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We come to worship you, O God, the creator and parent of us all. Help us to see how silly we look when we draw distinctions, in your name, that you do not draw. Open our hearts so that we may take in all your children in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially our tendency to judge and exclude others.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have created us all as your children, and yet we are more apt to look for things that separate us than for things that bring us together. We are more apt to judge one another harshly than we are to open our arms in acceptance. Help us to see your image in all those we encounter, and not just in those who seem most like ourselves. Enlarge our vision and our compassion, that we may truly be children of the Most High. Amen.
Leader: God is our loving parent and welcomes our turning from judgment to compassion. Receive God’s love and forgiveness and share these with others.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord’s Prayer)
We praise and worship you, O God, for you are the one who unites us in your own image.
(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 all as your children, and yet we are more apt to look for things that separate us than for things that bring us together. We are more apt to judge one another harshly than we are to open our arms in acceptance. Help us to see your image in all those we encounter, and not just in those who seem most like ourselves. Enlarge our vision and our compassion, that we may truly be children of the Most High.
We give you thanks for all the blessings of this life. We thank you for creation and our place in it. You have made us in your own image and called us your own children. We are most sublimely blessed.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We are aware of the many divisions that exist among us even though you call all of us your children. We are aware of the hurts and injustices that we bring upon one another. We lift up those who have been pushed away from you by self-righteous, religious words and actions. We pray for your healing Spirit to be upon those who are broken and on those who have caused the wounds, so that all may be healed.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father . . . Amen.
(or if the Lord’s Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
Use a sheet where there are similar pictures but with several differences in minor details, and ask the children to identify those differences. Then ask them to find the similarities -- there will be many more of those.
OR
Ask the children to find differences among them -- eye color, height, weight, clothing, etc. Then ask them to find the similarities. You can even point out all the similarities that don’t show -- everyone has two lungs, a stomach, etc.
THEN talk about how often we look for differences (and they are important), but our similarities are much more significant than our differences. We are all God’s children. We are all created by God. We belong together as God’s people.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
“I Once Was Lost...”
John 9:1-41
Today’s story about the man who received sight reminds me so much of a favorite hymn. See if you can tell me what hymn this is when I tell (sing) you the lines:
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
(Let the children answer.) The hymn is “Amazing Grace,” which begins with these words:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
Have you ever been lost? (Let them answer.) I have been lost before. Sometimes I get angry and frustrated because I’m lost. Sometimes I get scared. But when I find my way, I feel so much better.
I’ve never been blind before, but I can close my eyes and pretend. I find it hard to even think about what it would be like not to open my eyes because of being blind. To be blind and then able to see must be the most wonderful feeling in the world!
God’s grace is that wonderful and even more! It’s better than being found while lost, and better than seeing when blind. God’s grace is a way of seeing things in a different way. It is a way of seeing that God is on our side and that God is good and that God loves us. Once we see that, we see a whole new way. Life is wonderful and so much better because of God’s “amazing grace.”
Jesus once healed a man who was blind. In a way, Jesus heals everyone who comes to know him as Savior and Lord. To know Jesus is to be healed of our sin and given a new lease on life. Just like the man born blind, I can now see God’s wonderful, “amazing” grace.
Prayer: Dear God of Grace: Thank you for loving us just as we are. Amen.
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The Immediate Word, March 30, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
