Our Implicit Biases
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For July 19, 2020:
Our Implicit Biases
by Bethany Peerbolte
Genesis 28:10-19a
In the Scripture
Genesis 28:10-19a
Jacob is on the run from a huge problem of his own making. We can come up with all sorts of words to describe Jacob’s actions; I will submit stupid, greedy, shallow, and impetuous as options. He has lied and tricked his father into giving him a blessing that was meant for his brother. The same twin brother who he also cheated out of his birthright for a cup of stew. We can blame Esau for being naïve but Jacob’s actions were not innocent or loving. It isn’t even clear what Jacob’s motivation is to be so manipulative. He could be power hungry, or afraid of being left behind. Whatever the driving factors, Jacob has made a mess of his life. A mess that is currently on fire and chasing him away from everything he has ever known.
On the run Jacob becomes tired and finds a place to rest. He chooses a rock to lay his head on. Not exactly the choice of someone wanting to get a good night of sleep. Jacob has lived a sheltered life. When luxury is all one has experienced, choosing in a baren landscape can be difficult. It is possible Jacob did not understand what made a pillow comfortable. The rock may have been more the right size and shape of a pillow and so looked more like a pillow he was accustomed to. It could also be that Jacob did not believe he was worthy of comfort. The escape could have woken him up enough to the error of his ways to see that he had been acting like a scoundrel. Evil men do not deserve soft places to rest their head and a good night of rest. Perhaps the rock was to ensure Jacob got what he felt he deserved.
Rest does thankfully set in for Jacob and he dreams of a ladder, or ramp, that leads up to the heavens. Dreams are a valuable communication technique God uses often in scripture. Sometimes instructions are given about what the believer needs to do when they wake up. Some of them are warnings about impending trouble if something does not change. Then some of them, like this one, allows the dreamer to see the supernatural that is happening around them just beyond their senses. Jacob sees that there are heavenly helpers with him. Even though he has swindled and feigned his closest family members out of their highest honors, God is still working in and through Jacob.
When he wakes up Jacob realizes this is a sacred place. Readers get and extra “easter egg” knowing this is very close to if not the exact “place” Abraham, his grandfather, also identified as sacred (Genesis 12). Scripture keeps referring to the area Jacob rests in as a/the “place” in the same way it refers to Abram’s “place” of meeting God. This place is truly a special place for God’s chosen family. Jacob being here shows that despite Jacob’s messing with the blessing God will still stay true to the promise. Jacob still has a purpose in God’s plan.
Jacob dedicates the stone he slept on and marks the place, again, for God’s glory. This dedication signifies a shift in Jacob as well. Jacob has been through a lot of life already so this is not his origin story, but this is not the end of his story by any means. This moment is a turning point in how Jacob sees his place in the world. He is no longer striving to get to the top alone. God has shown Jacob that the heavens will help him and be with him on the journey. God proves to be the faithful partner in all the striving that is to come. No need for lies or tricks, Jacob will be blessed because God is on his side.
In the News
Implicit biases are the attitudes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. They live just below the surface of our senses. They inform our choices, but we do not notice their urgings. The debate is far from over about the effect of implicit biases. Some say it is the root of our racial issues in the United States, while others argue it is a statistically insignificant factor in the bigger picture. As white Americans strive to be better anti-racists the impact of implicit bias in the debate intensifies. We hope requiring implicit bias training for all professionals will help systems like health care root out systemic racism, but it will take time and careful attention to assess the real effectiveness. Even bias trainers who work with large police departments recognize their work is “necessary, but not sufficient.” There is no clean cut proven solution to the problems we have created over the past centuries.
The problems seem to be all woven together. Many white Americans want to do the right thing but knowing what to do is hard to sort out. We can read and march and post to social media. We can see it in our workplaces, schools, and justice systems. We can create lists of books that will make our workplaces better. We can have meetings where we talk about cultural barriers. However, some of us have been doing this for years. Allies are learning how to be better helpers, but there is a long road ahead.
A road that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color have been walking. They have even created spaces to fight the burnout of fighting racism. These events offer good music and a space to take a break from the battles. A place to rest. One type of rest that may be very needed right now is a rest to establish boundaries. Deciding now which battles we feel called to fight and how far we will go will help us identify when we will step in and when we will step back. One woman clarified her battle to be “getting her town board of health to declare that racism is a public health crisis.” This focus has helped her give energy to a cause, enact her values, without burning out on all the issues facing our country. If we all took a rest like Jacob, and and more clearly saw our path forward, we may have a chance of bending that arc of morality a bit more toward justice.
In the Sermon
Jacob had an implicit bias that he was alone in the world. This deep and hidden belief caused him to act in a way that denies God’s promise in his life. He felt like he had to steal the things he needed to survive. We too have acted like we are on our own. Listening to the whispers of our implicit biases that tell us the blessings in this world are limited. If someone else has them then we have less. This has caused many to cheat, and hoard, and oppress others in the pursuit of blessings.
Jacob’s actions, and now ours, have created an unhealthy environment. We have begun to flee from the way we use to live. The escape has been exhausting. We have been listening and reading books and articles. Checking in with friends. Marching and posting, and challenging and discussing, and watching, and learning. Much of this we have done before and so we worry this will fizzle out like the other times.
We keep striving, keep running toward a new life, but the problems we face are so many and varied. Even the things we once thought were comfortable solutions have turned out to be just a rock to lay our head on. A rock that was the shape and size of a pillow but was just a rock. We have an education system that looks like it teaches kids, but how much of its function is basically childcare? We have a police force that looks like they protect and serve, but how much of their history as slave collectors still runs through the system. We have a job market that looks like it offers enough jobs for the population, but how many of those jobs pay a living wage. The work to be done seems insurmountable. The burnout is inevitable.
The thing that will change our course for sure, the thing that changed Jacob forever, was rest. When Jacob rested, he saw what was just beneath the surface. God was with him. Even though he was a colossal screwup, God had always sent heavenly helpers to be with Jacob. This reshaped his world view and changed how he acted in the world.
We need to take a rest and assess our surroundings. Rest and see what we have learned and dream about a future where those lessons live uninhibited. Rest and assess who is with us. Surely we too will find God and heavenly helpers scurrying up and down that ladder with resources like peace, hope, joy, and love for us to refresh ourselves with. Rest will allow us to get up and fight again. Hopefully with a clearer notion of what fight God is calling us to and with renewed vision of how to make it all happen.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Let Us Step Over The Weeds In Our Lives
by Ron Love
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Richard Milhous Nixon is a weed. You can dismiss his uncouth language as heard on the White House tapes. You can overlook his presidential campaign where he launched what was called his “Southern strategy,” which was an attempt to increase white voters in the South by encouraging racism. What cannot be ignored is that Nixon was both a traitor and a murderer. Yes, a traitor and a murderer. This is why I denounce Nixon and show him no respect. Before his Democratic opponent Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the 1968 presidential election, Johnson was the focus of his campaign. Johnson was negotiating a peace treaty with Hanoi to end the Vietnam War. Nixon needed the Vietnam War on his campaign platform in order to win the election. Nixon sent his own delegation to Hanoi asking the leaders of North Vietnam not to agree to a peace settlement with Johnson, because Nixon would offer them a much sweeter deal once he was in the Oval Office. The delegation encouraged Hanoi to continue the war until Nixon was elected. These negations were an act of treason. During the extended conflict, which Nixon instituted, hundreds of young soldiers were killed or wounded. Their death meant little to Nixon if it allowed him to win the election. In common vernacular, to Nixon, these young men and women who died or were wounded were nothing more than “collateral damage” to his campaign. As a side note: Lyndon Johnson learned about these secret negotiations, but had to remain silent because he learned about it through illegal wire tapes. Johnson did not want to expose himself as being dishonest, and as one who was also breaking the law.
Abraham Lincoln is the one person who is almost universally called wheat. As seen in his writings, his speeches, and his life he was truly a compassionate and benevolent individual. One example will suffice. During the Civil War, both sides, Union and Confederate, claimed that their endeavor was blessed by God. Lincoln dismissed such nonsense when he said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
Then there are those who we cannot distinguish if they are a weed, or a shaft of wheat, or maybe a little of both. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is a good example of this. As one of the most prominent generals in the Confederacy he is a traitor who tried to establish the South as a new nation. Yet, he owned no slaves and was so benevolent to blacks that the citizens of Lexington, Virginia, where he lived and taught at the Virginia Military Institute, constantly ridiculed him. In Lexington, on May 1, 1858, three lawyers confronted him on the street in front of the county courthouse. This confrontation was a criticism that Jackson established a school for black children and financed the school himself. The three lawyers threatened Jackson with a grand jury investigation if he did not suspend the school. Jackson, normally the most civil of men, responded angrily, “Sir, if you were, as you should be, a Christian man, you would not think it or say so.” Jackson then turned on his heel and strode away. The school continued in operation for the next thirty years.
This brings us to our lectionary reading for this Sunday — the Parable of the Weeds. Jesus always used strong definitive language, and this parable is no exception. Jesus said, “The weeds are the children of the evil one.” Jesus also said, “the good seed are the children of the kingdom.” While it is clear that the weeds “will be thrown into the furnace of fire,” the wheat, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom.” It is important to note the future reference of this with the word “kingdom.” Jesus will be the one who judges between the weed and the wheat, not you or me. What Jesus is underscoring, as he did when he discussed separating the goats from the sheep, he is underscoring how serious we must be about living a life reflected in the Sermon on the Mount, about living a life that is obedient to the Ten Commandments, about living a life that honors the two Great Commandments.
It is good that judgment is Jesus’ decision alone, as all of us have some weeds growing around our feet. Though, as individuals we cannot avoid making character judgments, as I have with Nixon, Lincoln, and Jackson.
The question is, will we let the weeds grow in our lives until they are no longer manageable. Some of us, sadly, will have to walk through a field of kudzu. The issue is if you or me allow kudzu, that dreaded South Carolina weed where I reside, engulf us. Kudzu grows very rapidly. It is a vine that grows up around a tree and becomes so thick that it actually chokes its host to death.
As the Apostle Paul puts it, will we live by the flesh or by the Spirit. Will we let the flesh — the kudzu weed — choke us to death.
I have read several studies that when we see someone, even if is so slight as passing him or her in a grocery store aisle, our brain, in a nanosecond, follows this process of evaluation, and in this order: the color of their skin; their nationality; their sex; if I consider that individual to be sexually attractive; their age; their presumed socio-economic status.
Along this continuum a bigot will come to a chain-linked fence topped with barbed wire. A fence that surrounds a prison, because they are in prison. They cannot go any further. The individual before them is devalued, and further, a blight on society.
The rest of us will come to a speed bump, actually several speed bumps and we have developed the discipline to step over the speed bump — to step over those weeds in our lives. Yet, so many Christians lie to themselves. They are pretenders who claim to have no speed bumps in their human evaluation process. These are the Christians who say, “I have many black friends!” with “many” being in reality “few” to “none.” Their piety is odious. Their self-righteousness is obnoxious.
The entire process of tearing down the fence and learning to step over the speed bumps requires honest self-evaluation, reflection, and a willingness to change — to be transformed. The transformation comes through self-evaluation, living by the truths of the Scriptures, and observing those who are truly a living example of wheat in their lives.
Speed bumps. We all have them. Can you admit that you do? Are you able to step over them? Worse of all, do you confront a chain-linked fence?
This brings me to the purpose of this article, which is, your sermon. I would begin with some background information and interpretation of scripture. Then I would focus on how this is playing out today on the street that is outside your church’s front door. What is happening on the lot on which your church sits, in this very transformative time in history, an epoch that will be recorded in history books, that is, the recognition and acknowledgement that systematic racism has always been a part of our history, a part of our culture.
This has become a time in our history where the weeds and wheat have become very visible. Since the marches by African-Americans are a grass roots demonstration, with no prominent leader, it is hard to accentuate its leaders. We do know the weeds, though — the arsonists and looters. Weeds that have cropped up among the wheat of peaceful protesters.
You either adore President Donald Trump, or despise him. There does not seem to be any middle ground. From where I sit, and from where I judge, even though I indicated that Jesus is the ultimate judge, but we earthlings still form judgmental opinions, for me Trump is a weed — actually he is poison ivy or poison sumac. His rhetoric displays his bigotry. Of the pages I could write a few lines will be sufficient. Trump wants to “Make America Great Again.” In his three and a half years in office he appointed 220 federal judges, all of them white. This certainly is his vision of what a Great America looks like — white. Now, as he runs for election in 2020, believing in his own accomplishments, his new campaign slogan is “Keep America Great,” which is to say, “Keep America White.”
There are many other weeds who I could discuss. Amy Cooper has become a “Karen” in our society. She is the white woman who called the police on the African-American Christian Cooper, a bird watcher, who in Central Park asked her to leach her dog. Instead, she reported to 911 that she was being attacked by a black man. She has recently been charged with filing a false police report, which is punishable by one-year in jail.
Away with looking at the weeds. What is so heartwarming in our current place in history is the wheat we are seeing, some of it growing in the most unexpected places. Where we once saw individuals trod through a patch of kudzu, we are now seeing them gently strolling through a field of wild flowers.
The Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians are going to change their team’s names. Businesses are reevaluating their racist logos which have identified the companies for decades. This will mean that we will no longer see Mrs. Butterworth, Aunt Jemima, and Uncle Ben on our grocery shelves.
Plantations are no longer a desired place for a wedding.
There is a bill in Congress to rename our military bases that are named after Confederate generals. A congressman reported that even if Trump vetoes the bill, as he does not support the renaming, there are enough congregational votes to override his veto.
Even our language is being scrutinized for being racist. Even if the words did not originate during our period in history of slavery, or the aftermath of the years of Reconstruction and the following years of Jim Crow, we have adopted the concepts of racism into our language. For example, homes have a “master bedroom” which implies a master servant relationship. We are now going to call it the “primary bedroom.” The word “blacklist,” which lists the people who will not be included in an event, is in the process of being changed. Technology will no longer use the words “master” and “slave.”
Research has shown what a congregation wants most from a sermon, which is application. It is the question of how am I to apply what was just preached to my daily living. In this closing part of your sermon you must be bold. You must be forthright. You must be honest in sharing your speed bumps. You must offer an explanation of how you learned to step over those speed bumps — those weeds. Then you must challenge the congregation to do the same.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:
Genesis 28:10-19a
Exploring the imagery of staircases
Filmmakers have often allowed staircases to convey powerful images on the screen. Stairs can be used to convey power, endurance, transcendence, and conquest. The camera follows Rocky Balboa racing triumphantly up the stairs outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Other memorable movies that used stairs as a narrative tool include “Home Alone,” “Titanic,” “Vertigo” and “Harry Potter” — all employed stairs as a visual metaphor. Even television’s “Brady Bunch” understood how staircases lifted the stories from one level to the next.
* * *
Genesis 28:10-19a
Don’t you set down on the steps
Midway on his journey, Jacob rests in the desert and has a startling dream. Scholars suggest Jacob’s ladder was not like the song we learned in Bible School, but perhaps more like a Mesopotamian ziggurant, or ramp connecting heaven and earth. The movement between heaven and earth discloses God’s holy presence and purpose to Jacob. The stairway is critical, but it is only one stop on a much longer journey.
In a similar fashion, Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” delivers a strong reminder of the need to press forward in life because “life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, and splinters.”
He continues:
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
And then closes with the mother’s admonition: “So, boy don’t you turn back.”
* * *
Genesis 28:10-19a
Surely the Lord is in this place:
Clarissa Moll, a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is a writer whose husband, Rob, died a year ago. A mother of four young children, Moll has turned to writing about grief as a way of helping herself and others navigate the loneliness of grief’s transitions. Like Jacob, Moll’s journey in life was interrupted, leaving her struggling to find God in the void created by her husband’s passing.
In an article exploring her own grief with the isolating impacts of Covid-19, she writes, “Jesus found solace where others found uninhabitable wasteland. He didn’t fear isolation but looked to it for peace and renewal.”
In my own story, I’m still struggling to find light in the darkness. But eight months after Rob’s death, I know this truth with growing confidence: If Jesus sought out lonely places, he’s here with me in mine. He’s with me in the sadness of days spent without my husband; in a future now empty of his presence; in a quarantine that further removes me from all of the support that sustained me these past eight months.
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43; Romans 8:12-25
Practicing Patience
Both the parable and Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome have an underlying motif of patience. The farmer has to wait for the harvest to sort the good crop from the bad, and Paul exhorts the believers to wait with patience for the unfolding of God’s plans. Patience, in our lives, is seen mostly in its absence. We notice impatience more than the foundational gift of patient waiting. Still, Richard Anderson, CEO of Amtrak and former CEO of Delta Airlines, says that his most important leadership lesson is “to be patient and not lose my temper. And the reason that’s important is everything you do is an example, and people look at everything you do and take a signal from everything you do. And when you lose your temper, it really squelches debate and sends the wrong signal about how you want your organization to run…We have a tendency in these jobs to push really, really hard and want to go really, really fast. Change can’t ever be fast enough. But you do have to be patient enough and make sure that you always remain calm.”
Anderson adds that one way he practices patience through the slow work of writing notes to people. “You’ve got to be thankful to the people who get the work done, and you’ve got to be thankful to your customers. So, I find myself, more and more, writing hand-written notes to people. I must write a half a dozen a day.” He slows down enough to put pen to paper, in a tangible exercise of patience care for the people in his organization.
* * *
Romans 8:12-25
Revealed Glory
Being a pirate, says Tom Nash, has helped him develop a wealth of patience. Nash is kidding about the pirate part, although he says children often ask him if he’s a pirate, and he tells them he is. As he says, “I mean, let's be honest: I've got two hooks, prosthetic legs and a penchant for hard liquor.” Nash had a disease at a younger age that resulted in the loss of both of his arms at the elbows, and both of his legs below the knee. He says, “my increased resilience and general ability to problem-solve has been heightened by being forced to think laterally to overcome problems that most people aren't faced with.”
Nash remembers, “One of the first lessons that I learned immediately followed the painful and arduous task of learning how to walk again, but it went on to pay dividends for the rest of my life. It happened when I attempted to step up a curb. Now as rudimentary as this action sounds to most of you, stepping up a curb is somewhat of a challenge for those of us without ankle movement. So I tried stepping up the curb the way I'd always known how, front on, for days on end, with no success, until it became obvious that the time and effort I was investing into this endeavor was clearly disproportionate to the benefit of its outcome. So, I decided to inspect the problem from a different angle. If I couldn't use an ankle joint to achieve the range of motion that I required to mount the curb, I would have to use a different joint, like my hip. So I turned my body perpendicular to the curb and placed my foot up sideways, and I was able to step up immediately. Within five minutes, no staircase was safe from my advances.”
Paul writes to the believers in Rome, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” Nash has a similar view of the things he has learned in response to this disability. He says, “Now while relearning every action that one has ever cultivated might seem like a significant undertaking — and believe me, it very much was, in the short term — it was nonetheless having a positive effect on the way that I approached everything else in my life. Not only did it transform my ability to problem-solve, but I also felt I became more pragmatic, less sensitive to hindrances, in some cases, more patient, and magically transformed people's abilities to offer me their seats on public transport.”
His disability has been painful, inconvenient and also full of things newly revealed to him.
* * *
Genesis 28:10-19a
Finding Yourself in the Wrestling
As Jacob wrestles with the stranger in the night, he finds a piece of himself, along with his connection to God. He emerges from the wrestling match altered — a different version of himself. The same thing happened to Michael Copperman, who grew up poor, and one of the only Asians in his community. “I came to school in knee-high rubber boots with ill-fitting sweatpants that bore no corporate logos, and often I wore brightly colored tank tops and Hawaiian shirts sent by my aunties from the Islands. All of these things, combined with my shortness, the half-moon of my eyes, my brown-yellow skin, and my large vocabulary, made me impossibly weird, not right, an outsider. The kids let me know in certain ways. I remember there being one other Asian student, who avoided me like the plague; I wonder if he realized that I would never have sought him out, that already, looking at the mirror in the locked bathroom, I loathed my Asian face with its button nose, the dark hue of my skin. He got by, and because I had no choice, and perhaps because I was stubborn and had a hatred of injustice and so refused to yield to the kids who tried to terrorize me, I became a pariah. I walked the long fence during recess each day alone, staring at the ground, searching for the flash and glint of obsidian in the gravel, black treasures which I kept in my pockets and stacked in the corner of my desk. If a bully approached, I walked faster. I kept my head down and ignored the taunts — “Heyyy Shorty, Bruce Li, Bruce Lee, Hee-yah!” — I heard them clear enough and hated the kids who hollered at me almost as much as I hated myself for being vulnerable to their assault.”
He decided to make himself so tough that no one will bother him, which means joining the wrestling team. “All that matters is not being seen as weak. I didn’t know how to fit in: the brainy Asian kid, all four-foot-ten of my pudginess, the kid who always had the right answer to the teacher’s questions and who didn’t know anything about the things the other kids talked about, rap music and pop stars and donkey punches and BJs. I remember there were a couple of eighth grade boys who used to follow me about, take turns pretending to cough and saying “Chink” as loud as they could to avoid being caught.”
The coach was a part-timer, and the practices in the school cafeteria were chaotic, but the team brought him a sense of belonging somewhere. “As for the strength I wished to cultivate, it came slowly, evident first in my refusal to recognize a loss even when I had been tossed through the air and slammed to the mat — I popped back to my feet and came forward again, refused to be cowed. When the season was over, I didn’t stop but instead sought out mat clubs at the local high schools, ran the bike path behind my house until I threw up my lunch and my lungs burned, bought a cheap set of weights I kept hidden in the closet because my father said I was too young to pump iron. I kept silent in class as long as I could, and when I did open my mouth, and the big words slipped out drawing scorn, I learned to face it brazenly, with the sort of defiance I was able to back up because I’d become friends now with the other boys on the wrestling team, most of them kids from the trailer park and the Section 8 housing, bigger boys who were labeled then (and doubtless would be labeled now) as bad, troubled, bound for no good.”
Like Jacob, he wouldn’t give up. He says, “through sheer force of will I was tougher on the mat than all of them. I came back from the summer before eighth grade lean and brown from running and lifting weights, in baggy jeans and layered plaid shirts. I didn’t lose a wrestling match the entire year and had high school coaches from all the local high schools recruiting me. And that was mostly that. I still felt my difference, but I belonged.” In the wrestling comes a new identity.
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: O God, you have searched us and known us.
People: You know when we sit down and when we rise up.
Leader: Where can we go from your spirit?
People: Or where can we flee from your presence?
Leader: Search us, O God, and know our hearts.
People: Test us and know our thoughts.
OR
Leader: God who is ever present welcomes us to this holy time.
People: In awe we acknowledge God’s constant presence. :
Leader: God invites us to let our good grain grow strong.
People: We offer our good grain to God’s loving care. :
Leader: God asks us to offer our weeds to be taken away.
People: We offer our weeds to God’s cleansing fire.
Hymns and Songs:
O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
UMH: 57/58/59
H82: 493
PH: 466
AAHH: 184
NNBH: 23
NCH: 42
CH: 5
LBW: 559
ELW: 886
W&P: 96
AMEC: 1/2
Renew: 32
There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
UMH: 121
H82: 469/470
PH: 298
NCH: 23
CH: 73
LBW: 290
ELW: 587/588
W&P: 61
AMEC: 78
STLT: 213
He Leadeth Me, O Blessed Thought
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395
Sweet, Sweet Spirit
UMH: 334
AAHH: 326
NNBH: 127
NCH: 293
CH: 261
W&P: 134
AMEC: 196
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
UMH: 140
AAHH: 158
NNBH: 45
NCH: 423
CH: 86
ELW: 733
W&P: 72
AMEC: 84
Renew: 249
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
Amazing Grace
UMH: 378
H82: 671
PH: 280
AAHH: 271/272
NNBH: 161/163
NCH: 547/548
CH: 546
LBW: 448
ELW: 779
W&P: 422
AMEC: 226
STLT: 205/206
Renew: 189
Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us
UMH: 381
H82: 708
PH: 387
AAHH: 424
NNBH: 54
NCH: 252
CH: 558
LBW: 481
ELW: 789
W&P: 440
AMEC: 379
Jesus Calls Us
UMH: 398
H82: 549/550
NNBH: 183
NCH: 171/172
CH: 337
LBW: 494
ELW: 696
W&P: 345
AMEC: 238
We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder
UMH: 418
AAHH: 464
NNBH: 217
NCH: 500
AMEC: 363
STLT: 211
Open Our Eyes, Lord
CCB : 77
Renew: 91
Holy Ground
CCB : 5
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 incarnate in all creation:
Grant us the spiritual sight to see you present
as we struggle to live into your holy image;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are deep within all of creation. You have breathed yourself into your children and given us your image. We pray for insight and courage to acknowledge your presence as we strive to bring you likeness into view in our lives. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to see God in others as we assess their weeds and our grain.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We are quick to see the weeds that grow in the gardens of others but slow to see them in ours. We see mostly good grain in us and not so much in others. We are too often unaware of your presence among us in the very lives of those we criticize. Open our eyes to your presence and help us to tend our gardens well. Amen.
Leader: God is present with us now and always. God’s grace is abundant and freely offered when we open ourselves to God’s presence in those around us. Share God’s love and discover it in your own life.
Prayers of the People
We worship and adores you, O God Incarnate. You have created us as your children and you dwell within and among us.
(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 are quick to see the weeds that grow in the gardens of others but slow to see them in ours. We see mostly good grain in us and not so much in others. We are too often unaware of your presence among us in the very lives of those we criticize. Open our eyes to your presence and help us to tend our gardens well.
We give you thanks for all the ways in which your presence is made known to us. We thank you for the beauty of creation and for the beauty when your children share your love with one another. We thank you for the ways in which you work within and among us as we struggle to live out of the gift of your Spirit.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your children and for all of creation. We pray for those whose beauty as your children is denied by others who claim it for themselves. We pray for those who suffer violence from the hands of those who are their siblings in you. We pray for those whose hatred rots their own souls and destroys the lives of others.
(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
Most of us have had times when we thought we were alone but found out someone was there for us. Sometimes it is physical presence that we thought was absent but then we learn we were not alone. Other times it is a feeling of loneliness even when others are around and then we find out someone else really does care. Share with the children a time you felt like that and talk about how Jacob thought he was all alone but he learned that God was with him. God is always with us.
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CHILDREN'S SERMON
Hide and Seek
by Tom Willadsen
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Ask the kids if they’ve ever played hide and seek. Have they played it outdoors? Which part do they prefer, hiding or seeking?
If they prefer hiding, how do they feel when they’re found?
If they prefer seeking, do they like it when they get hints, either from other people playing, or people who are not playing?
Do they have an ideal hiding place, a place where they have never been found? Just answer “yes” or “no,” don’t reveal your secret, super hiding place where so many people can hear it!
Ask where they have a place to go where they like to be alone. Perhaps tell them about a place you remember from your childhood. Mine was a closet in the house I lived in until I was nine years old. The closet was a blocked off stairway to the floor above the one we lived on. Someone put a bar inside the door and we used it as a closet. But when I was little, I could go into the closet and climb behind the coats and sit on the stairs and be all alone. I felt safe and cozy there. (I’m 56 years old and have never found another place where I felt this way!) I thought I was alone there, but I wasn’t.
The Bible reading this morning says that there is no place where anyone can go to get away from God. If you could fly to where the sun rises, or where it sets, God is already there. If you could fly up to heaven or dig the deepest hole, God would already be there. Even in the best hiding place you have ever found, God is already there!
In another part of the Bible it says that in God we live, and move and have our being. Have you ever thought about being inside God? How does that feel? And did you know that God lives inside each of us?
So wherever you go, God is always with us! Maybe that special feeling you get in your favorite hiding place, the special feeling I had when I sat on the stairs behind the coats in the closet was being able to be alone with God!
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The Immediate Word, July 19, 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.
- Our Implicit Biases by Bethany Peerbolte — The world is striving. Much like Jacob we are learning our old ways of seeking security, power, and comfort were hurting those around us.
- Second Thoughts: Let Us Step Over The Weeds In Our Lives by Ron Love — Where we once saw individuals trod through a patch of kudzu, we are now seeing them gently strolling through a field of wild flowers.
- Sermon illustrations by Chris Keating and Mary Austin.
- Worship resources by George Reed — God is always present with us as we strive to grow; there is much wheat and many weeds among us and within us.
- Children’s sermon: Hide and Seek by Tom Willadsen — Do you (or when you were a child did you) have a place to go where you like(d) be alone?
Our Implicit Biasesby Bethany Peerbolte
Genesis 28:10-19a
In the Scripture
Genesis 28:10-19a
Jacob is on the run from a huge problem of his own making. We can come up with all sorts of words to describe Jacob’s actions; I will submit stupid, greedy, shallow, and impetuous as options. He has lied and tricked his father into giving him a blessing that was meant for his brother. The same twin brother who he also cheated out of his birthright for a cup of stew. We can blame Esau for being naïve but Jacob’s actions were not innocent or loving. It isn’t even clear what Jacob’s motivation is to be so manipulative. He could be power hungry, or afraid of being left behind. Whatever the driving factors, Jacob has made a mess of his life. A mess that is currently on fire and chasing him away from everything he has ever known.
On the run Jacob becomes tired and finds a place to rest. He chooses a rock to lay his head on. Not exactly the choice of someone wanting to get a good night of sleep. Jacob has lived a sheltered life. When luxury is all one has experienced, choosing in a baren landscape can be difficult. It is possible Jacob did not understand what made a pillow comfortable. The rock may have been more the right size and shape of a pillow and so looked more like a pillow he was accustomed to. It could also be that Jacob did not believe he was worthy of comfort. The escape could have woken him up enough to the error of his ways to see that he had been acting like a scoundrel. Evil men do not deserve soft places to rest their head and a good night of rest. Perhaps the rock was to ensure Jacob got what he felt he deserved.
Rest does thankfully set in for Jacob and he dreams of a ladder, or ramp, that leads up to the heavens. Dreams are a valuable communication technique God uses often in scripture. Sometimes instructions are given about what the believer needs to do when they wake up. Some of them are warnings about impending trouble if something does not change. Then some of them, like this one, allows the dreamer to see the supernatural that is happening around them just beyond their senses. Jacob sees that there are heavenly helpers with him. Even though he has swindled and feigned his closest family members out of their highest honors, God is still working in and through Jacob.
When he wakes up Jacob realizes this is a sacred place. Readers get and extra “easter egg” knowing this is very close to if not the exact “place” Abraham, his grandfather, also identified as sacred (Genesis 12). Scripture keeps referring to the area Jacob rests in as a/the “place” in the same way it refers to Abram’s “place” of meeting God. This place is truly a special place for God’s chosen family. Jacob being here shows that despite Jacob’s messing with the blessing God will still stay true to the promise. Jacob still has a purpose in God’s plan.
Jacob dedicates the stone he slept on and marks the place, again, for God’s glory. This dedication signifies a shift in Jacob as well. Jacob has been through a lot of life already so this is not his origin story, but this is not the end of his story by any means. This moment is a turning point in how Jacob sees his place in the world. He is no longer striving to get to the top alone. God has shown Jacob that the heavens will help him and be with him on the journey. God proves to be the faithful partner in all the striving that is to come. No need for lies or tricks, Jacob will be blessed because God is on his side.
In the News
Implicit biases are the attitudes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. They live just below the surface of our senses. They inform our choices, but we do not notice their urgings. The debate is far from over about the effect of implicit biases. Some say it is the root of our racial issues in the United States, while others argue it is a statistically insignificant factor in the bigger picture. As white Americans strive to be better anti-racists the impact of implicit bias in the debate intensifies. We hope requiring implicit bias training for all professionals will help systems like health care root out systemic racism, but it will take time and careful attention to assess the real effectiveness. Even bias trainers who work with large police departments recognize their work is “necessary, but not sufficient.” There is no clean cut proven solution to the problems we have created over the past centuries.
The problems seem to be all woven together. Many white Americans want to do the right thing but knowing what to do is hard to sort out. We can read and march and post to social media. We can see it in our workplaces, schools, and justice systems. We can create lists of books that will make our workplaces better. We can have meetings where we talk about cultural barriers. However, some of us have been doing this for years. Allies are learning how to be better helpers, but there is a long road ahead.
A road that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color have been walking. They have even created spaces to fight the burnout of fighting racism. These events offer good music and a space to take a break from the battles. A place to rest. One type of rest that may be very needed right now is a rest to establish boundaries. Deciding now which battles we feel called to fight and how far we will go will help us identify when we will step in and when we will step back. One woman clarified her battle to be “getting her town board of health to declare that racism is a public health crisis.” This focus has helped her give energy to a cause, enact her values, without burning out on all the issues facing our country. If we all took a rest like Jacob, and and more clearly saw our path forward, we may have a chance of bending that arc of morality a bit more toward justice.
In the Sermon
Jacob had an implicit bias that he was alone in the world. This deep and hidden belief caused him to act in a way that denies God’s promise in his life. He felt like he had to steal the things he needed to survive. We too have acted like we are on our own. Listening to the whispers of our implicit biases that tell us the blessings in this world are limited. If someone else has them then we have less. This has caused many to cheat, and hoard, and oppress others in the pursuit of blessings.
Jacob’s actions, and now ours, have created an unhealthy environment. We have begun to flee from the way we use to live. The escape has been exhausting. We have been listening and reading books and articles. Checking in with friends. Marching and posting, and challenging and discussing, and watching, and learning. Much of this we have done before and so we worry this will fizzle out like the other times.
We keep striving, keep running toward a new life, but the problems we face are so many and varied. Even the things we once thought were comfortable solutions have turned out to be just a rock to lay our head on. A rock that was the shape and size of a pillow but was just a rock. We have an education system that looks like it teaches kids, but how much of its function is basically childcare? We have a police force that looks like they protect and serve, but how much of their history as slave collectors still runs through the system. We have a job market that looks like it offers enough jobs for the population, but how many of those jobs pay a living wage. The work to be done seems insurmountable. The burnout is inevitable.
The thing that will change our course for sure, the thing that changed Jacob forever, was rest. When Jacob rested, he saw what was just beneath the surface. God was with him. Even though he was a colossal screwup, God had always sent heavenly helpers to be with Jacob. This reshaped his world view and changed how he acted in the world.
We need to take a rest and assess our surroundings. Rest and see what we have learned and dream about a future where those lessons live uninhibited. Rest and assess who is with us. Surely we too will find God and heavenly helpers scurrying up and down that ladder with resources like peace, hope, joy, and love for us to refresh ourselves with. Rest will allow us to get up and fight again. Hopefully with a clearer notion of what fight God is calling us to and with renewed vision of how to make it all happen.
SECOND THOUGHTSLet Us Step Over The Weeds In Our Lives
by Ron Love
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Richard Milhous Nixon is a weed. You can dismiss his uncouth language as heard on the White House tapes. You can overlook his presidential campaign where he launched what was called his “Southern strategy,” which was an attempt to increase white voters in the South by encouraging racism. What cannot be ignored is that Nixon was both a traitor and a murderer. Yes, a traitor and a murderer. This is why I denounce Nixon and show him no respect. Before his Democratic opponent Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the 1968 presidential election, Johnson was the focus of his campaign. Johnson was negotiating a peace treaty with Hanoi to end the Vietnam War. Nixon needed the Vietnam War on his campaign platform in order to win the election. Nixon sent his own delegation to Hanoi asking the leaders of North Vietnam not to agree to a peace settlement with Johnson, because Nixon would offer them a much sweeter deal once he was in the Oval Office. The delegation encouraged Hanoi to continue the war until Nixon was elected. These negations were an act of treason. During the extended conflict, which Nixon instituted, hundreds of young soldiers were killed or wounded. Their death meant little to Nixon if it allowed him to win the election. In common vernacular, to Nixon, these young men and women who died or were wounded were nothing more than “collateral damage” to his campaign. As a side note: Lyndon Johnson learned about these secret negotiations, but had to remain silent because he learned about it through illegal wire tapes. Johnson did not want to expose himself as being dishonest, and as one who was also breaking the law.
Abraham Lincoln is the one person who is almost universally called wheat. As seen in his writings, his speeches, and his life he was truly a compassionate and benevolent individual. One example will suffice. During the Civil War, both sides, Union and Confederate, claimed that their endeavor was blessed by God. Lincoln dismissed such nonsense when he said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
Then there are those who we cannot distinguish if they are a weed, or a shaft of wheat, or maybe a little of both. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is a good example of this. As one of the most prominent generals in the Confederacy he is a traitor who tried to establish the South as a new nation. Yet, he owned no slaves and was so benevolent to blacks that the citizens of Lexington, Virginia, where he lived and taught at the Virginia Military Institute, constantly ridiculed him. In Lexington, on May 1, 1858, three lawyers confronted him on the street in front of the county courthouse. This confrontation was a criticism that Jackson established a school for black children and financed the school himself. The three lawyers threatened Jackson with a grand jury investigation if he did not suspend the school. Jackson, normally the most civil of men, responded angrily, “Sir, if you were, as you should be, a Christian man, you would not think it or say so.” Jackson then turned on his heel and strode away. The school continued in operation for the next thirty years.
This brings us to our lectionary reading for this Sunday — the Parable of the Weeds. Jesus always used strong definitive language, and this parable is no exception. Jesus said, “The weeds are the children of the evil one.” Jesus also said, “the good seed are the children of the kingdom.” While it is clear that the weeds “will be thrown into the furnace of fire,” the wheat, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom.” It is important to note the future reference of this with the word “kingdom.” Jesus will be the one who judges between the weed and the wheat, not you or me. What Jesus is underscoring, as he did when he discussed separating the goats from the sheep, he is underscoring how serious we must be about living a life reflected in the Sermon on the Mount, about living a life that is obedient to the Ten Commandments, about living a life that honors the two Great Commandments.
It is good that judgment is Jesus’ decision alone, as all of us have some weeds growing around our feet. Though, as individuals we cannot avoid making character judgments, as I have with Nixon, Lincoln, and Jackson.
The question is, will we let the weeds grow in our lives until they are no longer manageable. Some of us, sadly, will have to walk through a field of kudzu. The issue is if you or me allow kudzu, that dreaded South Carolina weed where I reside, engulf us. Kudzu grows very rapidly. It is a vine that grows up around a tree and becomes so thick that it actually chokes its host to death.
As the Apostle Paul puts it, will we live by the flesh or by the Spirit. Will we let the flesh — the kudzu weed — choke us to death.
I have read several studies that when we see someone, even if is so slight as passing him or her in a grocery store aisle, our brain, in a nanosecond, follows this process of evaluation, and in this order: the color of their skin; their nationality; their sex; if I consider that individual to be sexually attractive; their age; their presumed socio-economic status.
Along this continuum a bigot will come to a chain-linked fence topped with barbed wire. A fence that surrounds a prison, because they are in prison. They cannot go any further. The individual before them is devalued, and further, a blight on society.
The rest of us will come to a speed bump, actually several speed bumps and we have developed the discipline to step over the speed bump — to step over those weeds in our lives. Yet, so many Christians lie to themselves. They are pretenders who claim to have no speed bumps in their human evaluation process. These are the Christians who say, “I have many black friends!” with “many” being in reality “few” to “none.” Their piety is odious. Their self-righteousness is obnoxious.
The entire process of tearing down the fence and learning to step over the speed bumps requires honest self-evaluation, reflection, and a willingness to change — to be transformed. The transformation comes through self-evaluation, living by the truths of the Scriptures, and observing those who are truly a living example of wheat in their lives.
Speed bumps. We all have them. Can you admit that you do? Are you able to step over them? Worse of all, do you confront a chain-linked fence?
This brings me to the purpose of this article, which is, your sermon. I would begin with some background information and interpretation of scripture. Then I would focus on how this is playing out today on the street that is outside your church’s front door. What is happening on the lot on which your church sits, in this very transformative time in history, an epoch that will be recorded in history books, that is, the recognition and acknowledgement that systematic racism has always been a part of our history, a part of our culture.
This has become a time in our history where the weeds and wheat have become very visible. Since the marches by African-Americans are a grass roots demonstration, with no prominent leader, it is hard to accentuate its leaders. We do know the weeds, though — the arsonists and looters. Weeds that have cropped up among the wheat of peaceful protesters.
You either adore President Donald Trump, or despise him. There does not seem to be any middle ground. From where I sit, and from where I judge, even though I indicated that Jesus is the ultimate judge, but we earthlings still form judgmental opinions, for me Trump is a weed — actually he is poison ivy or poison sumac. His rhetoric displays his bigotry. Of the pages I could write a few lines will be sufficient. Trump wants to “Make America Great Again.” In his three and a half years in office he appointed 220 federal judges, all of them white. This certainly is his vision of what a Great America looks like — white. Now, as he runs for election in 2020, believing in his own accomplishments, his new campaign slogan is “Keep America Great,” which is to say, “Keep America White.”
There are many other weeds who I could discuss. Amy Cooper has become a “Karen” in our society. She is the white woman who called the police on the African-American Christian Cooper, a bird watcher, who in Central Park asked her to leach her dog. Instead, she reported to 911 that she was being attacked by a black man. She has recently been charged with filing a false police report, which is punishable by one-year in jail.
Away with looking at the weeds. What is so heartwarming in our current place in history is the wheat we are seeing, some of it growing in the most unexpected places. Where we once saw individuals trod through a patch of kudzu, we are now seeing them gently strolling through a field of wild flowers.
The Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians are going to change their team’s names. Businesses are reevaluating their racist logos which have identified the companies for decades. This will mean that we will no longer see Mrs. Butterworth, Aunt Jemima, and Uncle Ben on our grocery shelves.
Plantations are no longer a desired place for a wedding.
There is a bill in Congress to rename our military bases that are named after Confederate generals. A congressman reported that even if Trump vetoes the bill, as he does not support the renaming, there are enough congregational votes to override his veto.
Even our language is being scrutinized for being racist. Even if the words did not originate during our period in history of slavery, or the aftermath of the years of Reconstruction and the following years of Jim Crow, we have adopted the concepts of racism into our language. For example, homes have a “master bedroom” which implies a master servant relationship. We are now going to call it the “primary bedroom.” The word “blacklist,” which lists the people who will not be included in an event, is in the process of being changed. Technology will no longer use the words “master” and “slave.”
Research has shown what a congregation wants most from a sermon, which is application. It is the question of how am I to apply what was just preached to my daily living. In this closing part of your sermon you must be bold. You must be forthright. You must be honest in sharing your speed bumps. You must offer an explanation of how you learned to step over those speed bumps — those weeds. Then you must challenge the congregation to do the same.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:Genesis 28:10-19a
Exploring the imagery of staircases
Filmmakers have often allowed staircases to convey powerful images on the screen. Stairs can be used to convey power, endurance, transcendence, and conquest. The camera follows Rocky Balboa racing triumphantly up the stairs outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Other memorable movies that used stairs as a narrative tool include “Home Alone,” “Titanic,” “Vertigo” and “Harry Potter” — all employed stairs as a visual metaphor. Even television’s “Brady Bunch” understood how staircases lifted the stories from one level to the next.
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Genesis 28:10-19a
Don’t you set down on the steps
Midway on his journey, Jacob rests in the desert and has a startling dream. Scholars suggest Jacob’s ladder was not like the song we learned in Bible School, but perhaps more like a Mesopotamian ziggurant, or ramp connecting heaven and earth. The movement between heaven and earth discloses God’s holy presence and purpose to Jacob. The stairway is critical, but it is only one stop on a much longer journey.
In a similar fashion, Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” delivers a strong reminder of the need to press forward in life because “life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, and splinters.”
He continues:
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
And then closes with the mother’s admonition: “So, boy don’t you turn back.”
* * *
Genesis 28:10-19a
Surely the Lord is in this place:
Clarissa Moll, a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is a writer whose husband, Rob, died a year ago. A mother of four young children, Moll has turned to writing about grief as a way of helping herself and others navigate the loneliness of grief’s transitions. Like Jacob, Moll’s journey in life was interrupted, leaving her struggling to find God in the void created by her husband’s passing.
In an article exploring her own grief with the isolating impacts of Covid-19, she writes, “Jesus found solace where others found uninhabitable wasteland. He didn’t fear isolation but looked to it for peace and renewal.”
In my own story, I’m still struggling to find light in the darkness. But eight months after Rob’s death, I know this truth with growing confidence: If Jesus sought out lonely places, he’s here with me in mine. He’s with me in the sadness of days spent without my husband; in a future now empty of his presence; in a quarantine that further removes me from all of the support that sustained me these past eight months.
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From team member Mary Austin:Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43; Romans 8:12-25
Practicing Patience
Both the parable and Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome have an underlying motif of patience. The farmer has to wait for the harvest to sort the good crop from the bad, and Paul exhorts the believers to wait with patience for the unfolding of God’s plans. Patience, in our lives, is seen mostly in its absence. We notice impatience more than the foundational gift of patient waiting. Still, Richard Anderson, CEO of Amtrak and former CEO of Delta Airlines, says that his most important leadership lesson is “to be patient and not lose my temper. And the reason that’s important is everything you do is an example, and people look at everything you do and take a signal from everything you do. And when you lose your temper, it really squelches debate and sends the wrong signal about how you want your organization to run…We have a tendency in these jobs to push really, really hard and want to go really, really fast. Change can’t ever be fast enough. But you do have to be patient enough and make sure that you always remain calm.”
Anderson adds that one way he practices patience through the slow work of writing notes to people. “You’ve got to be thankful to the people who get the work done, and you’ve got to be thankful to your customers. So, I find myself, more and more, writing hand-written notes to people. I must write a half a dozen a day.” He slows down enough to put pen to paper, in a tangible exercise of patience care for the people in his organization.
* * *
Romans 8:12-25
Revealed Glory
Being a pirate, says Tom Nash, has helped him develop a wealth of patience. Nash is kidding about the pirate part, although he says children often ask him if he’s a pirate, and he tells them he is. As he says, “I mean, let's be honest: I've got two hooks, prosthetic legs and a penchant for hard liquor.” Nash had a disease at a younger age that resulted in the loss of both of his arms at the elbows, and both of his legs below the knee. He says, “my increased resilience and general ability to problem-solve has been heightened by being forced to think laterally to overcome problems that most people aren't faced with.”
Nash remembers, “One of the first lessons that I learned immediately followed the painful and arduous task of learning how to walk again, but it went on to pay dividends for the rest of my life. It happened when I attempted to step up a curb. Now as rudimentary as this action sounds to most of you, stepping up a curb is somewhat of a challenge for those of us without ankle movement. So I tried stepping up the curb the way I'd always known how, front on, for days on end, with no success, until it became obvious that the time and effort I was investing into this endeavor was clearly disproportionate to the benefit of its outcome. So, I decided to inspect the problem from a different angle. If I couldn't use an ankle joint to achieve the range of motion that I required to mount the curb, I would have to use a different joint, like my hip. So I turned my body perpendicular to the curb and placed my foot up sideways, and I was able to step up immediately. Within five minutes, no staircase was safe from my advances.”
Paul writes to the believers in Rome, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” Nash has a similar view of the things he has learned in response to this disability. He says, “Now while relearning every action that one has ever cultivated might seem like a significant undertaking — and believe me, it very much was, in the short term — it was nonetheless having a positive effect on the way that I approached everything else in my life. Not only did it transform my ability to problem-solve, but I also felt I became more pragmatic, less sensitive to hindrances, in some cases, more patient, and magically transformed people's abilities to offer me their seats on public transport.”
His disability has been painful, inconvenient and also full of things newly revealed to him.
* * *
Genesis 28:10-19a
Finding Yourself in the Wrestling
As Jacob wrestles with the stranger in the night, he finds a piece of himself, along with his connection to God. He emerges from the wrestling match altered — a different version of himself. The same thing happened to Michael Copperman, who grew up poor, and one of the only Asians in his community. “I came to school in knee-high rubber boots with ill-fitting sweatpants that bore no corporate logos, and often I wore brightly colored tank tops and Hawaiian shirts sent by my aunties from the Islands. All of these things, combined with my shortness, the half-moon of my eyes, my brown-yellow skin, and my large vocabulary, made me impossibly weird, not right, an outsider. The kids let me know in certain ways. I remember there being one other Asian student, who avoided me like the plague; I wonder if he realized that I would never have sought him out, that already, looking at the mirror in the locked bathroom, I loathed my Asian face with its button nose, the dark hue of my skin. He got by, and because I had no choice, and perhaps because I was stubborn and had a hatred of injustice and so refused to yield to the kids who tried to terrorize me, I became a pariah. I walked the long fence during recess each day alone, staring at the ground, searching for the flash and glint of obsidian in the gravel, black treasures which I kept in my pockets and stacked in the corner of my desk. If a bully approached, I walked faster. I kept my head down and ignored the taunts — “Heyyy Shorty, Bruce Li, Bruce Lee, Hee-yah!” — I heard them clear enough and hated the kids who hollered at me almost as much as I hated myself for being vulnerable to their assault.”
He decided to make himself so tough that no one will bother him, which means joining the wrestling team. “All that matters is not being seen as weak. I didn’t know how to fit in: the brainy Asian kid, all four-foot-ten of my pudginess, the kid who always had the right answer to the teacher’s questions and who didn’t know anything about the things the other kids talked about, rap music and pop stars and donkey punches and BJs. I remember there were a couple of eighth grade boys who used to follow me about, take turns pretending to cough and saying “Chink” as loud as they could to avoid being caught.”
The coach was a part-timer, and the practices in the school cafeteria were chaotic, but the team brought him a sense of belonging somewhere. “As for the strength I wished to cultivate, it came slowly, evident first in my refusal to recognize a loss even when I had been tossed through the air and slammed to the mat — I popped back to my feet and came forward again, refused to be cowed. When the season was over, I didn’t stop but instead sought out mat clubs at the local high schools, ran the bike path behind my house until I threw up my lunch and my lungs burned, bought a cheap set of weights I kept hidden in the closet because my father said I was too young to pump iron. I kept silent in class as long as I could, and when I did open my mouth, and the big words slipped out drawing scorn, I learned to face it brazenly, with the sort of defiance I was able to back up because I’d become friends now with the other boys on the wrestling team, most of them kids from the trailer park and the Section 8 housing, bigger boys who were labeled then (and doubtless would be labeled now) as bad, troubled, bound for no good.”
Like Jacob, he wouldn’t give up. He says, “through sheer force of will I was tougher on the mat than all of them. I came back from the summer before eighth grade lean and brown from running and lifting weights, in baggy jeans and layered plaid shirts. I didn’t lose a wrestling match the entire year and had high school coaches from all the local high schools recruiting me. And that was mostly that. I still felt my difference, but I belonged.” In the wrestling comes a new identity.
* * * * * *
WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: O God, you have searched us and known us.
People: You know when we sit down and when we rise up.
Leader: Where can we go from your spirit?
People: Or where can we flee from your presence?
Leader: Search us, O God, and know our hearts.
People: Test us and know our thoughts.
OR
Leader: God who is ever present welcomes us to this holy time.
People: In awe we acknowledge God’s constant presence. :
Leader: God invites us to let our good grain grow strong.
People: We offer our good grain to God’s loving care. :
Leader: God asks us to offer our weeds to be taken away.
People: We offer our weeds to God’s cleansing fire.
Hymns and Songs:
O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
UMH: 57/58/59
H82: 493
PH: 466
AAHH: 184
NNBH: 23
NCH: 42
CH: 5
LBW: 559
ELW: 886
W&P: 96
AMEC: 1/2
Renew: 32
There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
UMH: 121
H82: 469/470
PH: 298
NCH: 23
CH: 73
LBW: 290
ELW: 587/588
W&P: 61
AMEC: 78
STLT: 213
He Leadeth Me, O Blessed Thought
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395
Sweet, Sweet Spirit
UMH: 334
AAHH: 326
NNBH: 127
NCH: 293
CH: 261
W&P: 134
AMEC: 196
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
UMH: 140
AAHH: 158
NNBH: 45
NCH: 423
CH: 86
ELW: 733
W&P: 72
AMEC: 84
Renew: 249
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
Amazing Grace
UMH: 378
H82: 671
PH: 280
AAHH: 271/272
NNBH: 161/163
NCH: 547/548
CH: 546
LBW: 448
ELW: 779
W&P: 422
AMEC: 226
STLT: 205/206
Renew: 189
Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us
UMH: 381
H82: 708
PH: 387
AAHH: 424
NNBH: 54
NCH: 252
CH: 558
LBW: 481
ELW: 789
W&P: 440
AMEC: 379
Jesus Calls Us
UMH: 398
H82: 549/550
NNBH: 183
NCH: 171/172
CH: 337
LBW: 494
ELW: 696
W&P: 345
AMEC: 238
We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder
UMH: 418
AAHH: 464
NNBH: 217
NCH: 500
AMEC: 363
STLT: 211
Open Our Eyes, Lord
CCB : 77
Renew: 91
Holy Ground
CCB : 5
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 incarnate in all creation:
Grant us the spiritual sight to see you present
as we struggle to live into your holy image;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are deep within all of creation. You have breathed yourself into your children and given us your image. We pray for insight and courage to acknowledge your presence as we strive to bring you likeness into view in our lives. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to see God in others as we assess their weeds and our grain.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We are quick to see the weeds that grow in the gardens of others but slow to see them in ours. We see mostly good grain in us and not so much in others. We are too often unaware of your presence among us in the very lives of those we criticize. Open our eyes to your presence and help us to tend our gardens well. Amen.
Leader: God is present with us now and always. God’s grace is abundant and freely offered when we open ourselves to God’s presence in those around us. Share God’s love and discover it in your own life.
Prayers of the People
We worship and adores you, O God Incarnate. You have created us as your children and you dwell within and among us.
(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 are quick to see the weeds that grow in the gardens of others but slow to see them in ours. We see mostly good grain in us and not so much in others. We are too often unaware of your presence among us in the very lives of those we criticize. Open our eyes to your presence and help us to tend our gardens well.
We give you thanks for all the ways in which your presence is made known to us. We thank you for the beauty of creation and for the beauty when your children share your love with one another. We thank you for the ways in which you work within and among us as we struggle to live out of the gift of your Spirit.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all your children and for all of creation. We pray for those whose beauty as your children is denied by others who claim it for themselves. We pray for those who suffer violence from the hands of those who are their siblings in you. We pray for those whose hatred rots their own souls and destroys the lives of others.
(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
Most of us have had times when we thought we were alone but found out someone was there for us. Sometimes it is physical presence that we thought was absent but then we learn we were not alone. Other times it is a feeling of loneliness even when others are around and then we find out someone else really does care. Share with the children a time you felt like that and talk about how Jacob thought he was all alone but he learned that God was with him. God is always with us.
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CHILDREN'S SERMONHide and Seek
by Tom Willadsen
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Ask the kids if they’ve ever played hide and seek. Have they played it outdoors? Which part do they prefer, hiding or seeking?
If they prefer hiding, how do they feel when they’re found?
If they prefer seeking, do they like it when they get hints, either from other people playing, or people who are not playing?
Do they have an ideal hiding place, a place where they have never been found? Just answer “yes” or “no,” don’t reveal your secret, super hiding place where so many people can hear it!
Ask where they have a place to go where they like to be alone. Perhaps tell them about a place you remember from your childhood. Mine was a closet in the house I lived in until I was nine years old. The closet was a blocked off stairway to the floor above the one we lived on. Someone put a bar inside the door and we used it as a closet. But when I was little, I could go into the closet and climb behind the coats and sit on the stairs and be all alone. I felt safe and cozy there. (I’m 56 years old and have never found another place where I felt this way!) I thought I was alone there, but I wasn’t.
The Bible reading this morning says that there is no place where anyone can go to get away from God. If you could fly to where the sun rises, or where it sets, God is already there. If you could fly up to heaven or dig the deepest hole, God would already be there. Even in the best hiding place you have ever found, God is already there!
In another part of the Bible it says that in God we live, and move and have our being. Have you ever thought about being inside God? How does that feel? And did you know that God lives inside each of us?
So wherever you go, God is always with us! Maybe that special feeling you get in your favorite hiding place, the special feeling I had when I sat on the stairs behind the coats in the closet was being able to be alone with God!
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The Immediate Word, July 19, 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.
