Our Maps Are Too Small
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The images are heart-wrenching, as the world's attention has slowly become focused on the ongoing drought and famine in Somalia. There's nothing that tears at our emotions like seeing pictures of starving children -- a phenomenon that surely stirred the world's generous response nearly three decades ago to a similar famine centered in Somalia's next-door neighbor, Ethiopia (most remembered today for providing the inspiration for the massive Live Aid concerts and the all-star recording of "We Are The World"). We hear news of families struggling to survive and traveling hundreds of miles to overwhelmed refugee camps in search of aid -- a journey that echoes the one Joseph's brothers undertook in the lectionary's Genesis passage for this week. They were in such need that they even sought help from Egypt, a nation that had historically enslaved Jews. We certainly could understand if Joseph -- who had risen to an unlikely position of power in Egypt -- had harbored bitter feelings about his treatment by his brothers and had reservations about dealing with them. In a way, that parallels how many of us might feel about aid toward Somalia -- in addition to the inevitable creep of "compassion fatigue," it's a place where there's been a long-standing civil war and where famine will assuredly occur again sooner or later... and besides, it's halfway around the world when we might be more focused on "taking care of our own." (Indeed, the reign of anarchy is worrisome enough that the U.S. government recently suspended aid shipments for a time out of concern that they would fall into the hands of terrorist groups.) But in thisinstallment of The Immediate Word, team member Mary Austin notes that Joseph's reaction -- choosing reconciliation over revenge and providing for his brothers without "blaming the victim" -- should put to rest all our objections and give us a model for reaching out beyond the confines of our narrow existence. Mary points out that God is vividly illustrating for us that those who we might think of as strangers (foreigners) are actually part of our family... and that the mental maps we've constructed about what's important in our lives are often much smaller than the map God has constructed for us.
Team member Roger Lovette shares some additional thoughts on Joseph's act of reconciliation with his brothers as well as the Psalmist's plaintive call for "brothers to live together in unity." At a time when the fault lines of our national discourse are so apparent, and when politicians routinely engage in demonizing their opponents, Roger observes that we would do well to remember that we are all ultimately on the same side and that God asks us to reach out and reconcile with even our most bitter enemies. Roger reminds us that reveling in our divisions merely keeps us from working together to rebuild from calamities and create a strong future.
Our Maps Are Too Small
by Mary Austin
Genesis 45:1-15
Perhaps you've seen the iconic cartoon from The New Yorker that depicts a map of the United States -- as seen from a New Yorker's point of view. Drawn by artist Saul Steinberg, the cartoon has New York City as half of the map, with the rest of the country a bland square, the states jumbled together, with a few landmarks before your eye arrives at the Pacific Ocean.
It may be that most of us see the world that way -- with the place where we live vivid and clear, taking up half of our mental map. Our own towns and cities, even neighborhoods, are at the forefront of our minds. Our local lives take our interest and energy and our thoughts are filled with the events in our town, our neighborhood, our schools, and our state. Washington might cause us despair -- but at least it's far away.
The familiar classroom maps (Mercator projections, in map-speak) that render the globe flat and North America in the center may also shape our view of the world. The Peters Projection map, an area-accurate map that shows every country as its true size, is widely used in Europe, but rarely in the United States. This map shows the true size of the continent of Africa and its 54 separate countries, a scale lost in conventional flat maps. Its introduction was controversial -- there are many ways to translate the area of a spherical world to a flat map, and none are perfect, but apparently we like the map we're used to.
Yet, every now and again, God expands our spiritual map, if not our paper one. Every now and again, God calls our attention to the wider world in a way we can't ignore. The current news from Africa is such a call and it holds an eerie parallel to the Genesis story for this week.
THE WORLD
As the U.S. Congress has been squabbling over a deal to raise the debt ceiling, many of us have hardly noticed until recent weeks the march of thousands of hungry people across Somalia. In a region damaged by drought, famine has come again in an echo of the story of Joseph's brothers leaving home to seek food in Egypt.
Like Joseph's brothers, today's hungry people leave home and travel great distances to seek food. The U.S. government estimates that the drought and resulting famine have killed 29,000 Somali children under the age of 5 in just the last 90 days alone, a number confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control. The United Nations estimates that 3.2 million Somali people are in need of immediate food assistance to save their lives -- out of a population of 7.5 million -- and that 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished.
Complicating the problem, militants connected with the Al Shabab group have blocked food aid, arguing that there's no famine. The Christian Science Monitor reported that: "Planeloads of food have already been sent to Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, where sections controlled by the globally recognized government are seeing handouts to the most affected people. But great swathes of the rest of southern Somalia remain off limits to the main agencies, including the UN's World Food Programme. The problem is that Al Shabab, Somalia's Al Qaeda-inspired Islamist group, has repeatedly denied that there is a famine in their territory and refuses help from what they have termed 'Christian organizations' with 'hidden agendas'."
Many Somalis have fled into Kenya and Ethiopia, taking refuge in already crowded camps. The Doctors Without Borders website describes several places where the group is operating feeding programs. One person who received help -- a mother of six who walked nearly 150 miles to reach the camp -- told this story: "I heard that in Jilib there is a camp [for displaced people] with food distributions and that made us start our trip. We wanted to go to the Kenyan refugee camps, but we were not able to pay the high price of the transportation. Instead, we arrived in Jilib, hoping to get some assistance. We used to have cows but we lost most of our livestock four months ago. When we lost our last two cows, we set out from our village on foot. It took us 15 days to reach Jilib."
THE WORD
That woman's story -- and the stories of thousands of other people in feeding centers and refugee camps -- is a modern parallel to the story of Joseph's brothers.
We've been following of the unfolding of God's plans at work as Jacob becomes the patriarch of twelve sons, born of his two wives and two family servants. Finally the long-promised dream of becoming the start of a great nation, the promise made so long ago to Abraham, seems to be unfolding. But the sons of Jacob fight and are jealous of one another, and the brothers conspire to do away with Joseph. He's sold into slavery in Egypt, as an alternative to death. There he rises to power and prominence through his service to Pharaoh.
Along the way, Joseph apparently lets go of the bitterness he felt toward his brothers. When he has children, his sons' names (41:51-52) speak of his gratitude to God that God has allowed him to forget his sorrow and to be fruitful in a new place. As Joseph is living a parallel life in Egypt, making his way from prison to Pharaoh's service, the other sons of Jacob are apparently prospering as well. When the famine comes, they have plenty of money to buy grain. Their long trip to Egypt for food connects them again with Joseph, who recognizes them right away. He, however -- dressed in the style of Egypt's court -- looks like a stranger to them.
As writer Geoff McElroy notes: "There is no direct revelation of the covenant in the Joseph cycle, at least not to Joseph. Nowhere does God appear to Joseph and definitely declare that he was the person through whom the promise would continue. God instead had been working behind the scenes and on the down low, working through and among human plans and manipulations." Yet the presence of God is clear to Joseph all along. When he finally makes himself known to his brothers, he proclaims to them that what they intended for evil, God has used for good.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
With plenty of misery to go around here at home, it's easy for us to pay scant attention to this current crisis in Africa. Money is less a problem than ensuring the delivery of food to the people who need it and this crisis echoes past food crises in the same area. As the BBC notes, "In recent years, major famines have ravaged parts of Africa. The most badly affected area is in the northeast where the populations of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan have all been victims of periodic privation." Kenya in 1997; the Sudan in 1994; Somalia in 1992; Ethiopia in 1988; Ethiopia in 1984 and 1985.
Why care when it will only happen again? Why bother, when some perfect storm of climate, scarce resources, and unstable governments will bring another famine in a few years? And where is the Horn of Africa on a map anyway?
The story of Joseph and his brothers is a beautiful reminder that in God's world, the person who seems to be a stranger -- a foreigner, even -- turns out to be family. We may fall short of the evil Joseph's brothers intend, but we are often willing to live in a world smaller than the one God made. It's hard for God to use our efforts for good instead of evil, if we're bent on doing as little as we can.
A caller to a radio news show the other day recalled the riveting image from a previous famine in the Sudan of a vulture sitting beside a toddler, waiting for her inevitable death to come. (The picture won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for photographer Kevin Carter, who chased off the vulture after taking the picture. The photographer was so haunted by his work in places of violence and hunger around the world that he later committed suicide.) The caller said that he had printed out the picture and keeps it on his desk to remind him to pay attention to the needs of the wider world and to do whatever he can to help.
His map includes all of God's people. The story of Joseph and his brothers, now reconciled, with food enough for everyone, invites us to see the world with the same wide lens, and to do all that we can for one another. The stranger is one of us and the map of faith includes the entire world equally.
SECOND THOUGHTS
On the Same Side
by Roger Lovette
Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133
The debt-ceiling crisis in Washington is finally over -- yet no one seems happy. Congress has gone home for a five-week recess and more than a few wish they did not have to return to the Capitol. The stock market has taken a serious dip and much of the nation is frightened. Despite the give-and-take and the very grudging compromises of our financial debate, Washington seems to mirror much of the nation. We are a divided people. Some pundits, wringing their hands, moan: "We've never seen it so bad." Perhaps they have forgotten to read the Bible or even pages of our own nation's history.
This week's text in Genesis is the culmination of a long story. Joseph, his father's favorite, lorded it over his brothers. They grew angry and decided to kill their brother. At the last minute they changed their minds and sold him into slavery. (Not exactly a benevolent choice.) Their old father was told that Joseph was dead, and he was bereft with grief. Years later Joseph found his way into Pharaoh's court. In time he became a valued administrator, next to the Pharaoh in power. So one day his brothers, desperate for food in a time of famine, came to Egypt for help. They met their brother, though they did not know who he was. Their story is a wonderful scene of reconciliation as Joseph forgave his brothers and met their needs. This is one of the high-water marks in the Bible.
Scholars think that the words in Psalm 133 were written after the Exile. God's people finally were allowed to go home but their homecoming was not as they expected. Everything was in shambles -- temple, economy, farmlands -- everything. Rebuilding was hard work and many took out their anger and rage on one another. Some Psalmist writes in reverie to his divided people, "Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity." It was a call for harmony and solidarity for a people living with defensiveness and bitterness. How could the nation possibly rebuild if they were a divided people?
Both texts call God's people to a time of reconciliation and healing. Joseph, far from being a saint, reached out to his brothers who had tried to take his life. In affirming family and tribal solidarity, the nation was assured of a future. The Psalmist recognized that without working together, the task of rebuilding would be well nigh possible.
Despite our stormy history, our nation came together enough to write a Constitution and Bill of Rights that holds us steady even today. At various junctures in our history that nation has sometimes reached up and made the word "all" more than a dream in a document. If we are to move into the future as a strong people, we will need one another.
On their 40-year journey, God's chosen had to pause and stop and rest in order that the old and infirm and sick and difficult would not be left behind.
Reconciliation is at the heart of our faith. Jesus said that if we come to the altar with a gift and we have fought against our brother -- the gift would not count. We have homework to do. Churches are made up of all-too-human people who often have a difficult time with unity. But if we are to have a future that is strong, we must follow the way of Joseph and the Psalmist.
Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former United Nations ambassador, tells the story of an old farmer who decided to take two of the roosters he had trained to the local cockfight. Surely they would win -- the farmer had worked them hard and they were strong. So he put them in a cage and drove his truck to the cockfight. As he lifted the cage out of the truck to prepare for the fight, he was astounded -- in the cage he found nothing but feathers and blood. The roosters had killed each other. The old farmer shook his head as he observed, "They didn't realize they were both on the same side!"
We must recover the spirit of our texts. Our forebears knew it well when they stitched into our pledge of allegiance: "One nation, under God, indivisible... with liberty and justice for all." Genesis and Psalms remind us that in a divided time our task is far from finished.
One of the great illustrations of reconciliation in our time is the splendid story of Nelson Mandela. Incarcerated for 27 years by the apartheid government, after his release he became the first black president of South Africa. Many encouraged him to retaliate against the white citizens for all the injustice he and his people had experienced. He refused their pleas and gave the world a powerful lesson in reconciliation. He knew that the wounds of his country needed healing and that the only way forward was to bind the nation together. So he established a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" that sought to provide a complete accounting of the past... without seeking punishment against the perpetrators.
Furthermore, Mandela shrewdly took the opportunity of South Africa's hosting of the 1995 Rugby World Cup -- the traditional sport of the white minority, and the country's first time on the international athletic stage after years of banishment -- to bring the bitterly divided country together in support of the Springboks, the country's national rugby side. That story is beautifully told in the 2009 film Invictus. Interestingly, the word invictus means "undefeated" or "unconquered." (A documentary about that World Cup -- The 16th Man -- provides even more testimony about the power of Mandela's vision to bring mortal enemies to the understanding that they are on the same side. It features commentary from two former radicals, one black and one white, each of whom had been imprisoned for racially motivated killings. Both of them initially found Mandela's support of the Springboks unimaginable... but as they perceived its genuine nature and the effect it had on the entire nation, they each found their own perspectives completely changed.)
ILLUSTRATIONS
Working in the midst of a war zone is an inherently dangerous activity, as Amanda Lindhout discovered to her chagrin in 2008. Lindhout, a Canadian freelance journalist who bears a striking resemblance to Kate Middleton, was trying to document the suffering of many Somalis -- and one day as she, an Australian photojournalist, a Somali translator, and their driver approached a refugee camp, they were kidnapped by a shadowy group of gunmen. Amanda was held captive for 15 months under difficult conditions, with little food, medicine, or clean drinking water.
You might think that she would develop a deep antipathy for the country that treated her like this -- but during her captivity her thoughts revolved around how she might somehow be able to work toward making Somalia a better place that didn't breed routine brutality and violence. So when she was finally released in late 2009, Lindhout created the Global Enrichment Foundation as a vehicle for helping to build schools in Somali refugee camps in Kenya.
But actually returning to Somalia? That seemed entirely out of the question -- she'd administer the foundation from her home in Canada... but that was before she recently traveled to one of the refugee camps in Kenya and witnessed firsthand the famine's utter devastation. Despite her horrific previous experience, she immediately resolved that she had to do something to get help to where people actually needed it -- i.e., inside Somalia. So it was that she organized an aid convoy with enough to feed 15,000 people, and last week she accompanied that convoy as it crossed the Somali border.
Needless to say, the amount of personal courage Lindhout's mission required was immense -- but it's also a vivid demonstration of someone willing to reach out to those in need... even halfway around the world from her home and in a place whose dangers she was intimately familiar with. One can say without any reservation that Amanda Lindhout's map is definitely not too small!
* * *
One doesn't have to go halfway around the world to make one's map larger -- Eleanor Josaitis is a striking example of someone who made her life's work expanding the borders of people's maps right in her own community. She didn't waste time debating -- instead she just got right to work reaching out with a helping hand to others. In the process, renowned author and columnist Mitch Albom noted, she "employed thousands, inspired tens of thousands, influenced millions.... She started in a basement with a few friends, a housewife, and a mother who took stock of the world around her in the 1960s -- especially the racial tension in Detroit -- and decided she needed to help."
Josaitis, who passed away this week, was the driving force behind Focus: HOPE -- an organization that she co-founded with her priest in 1968. At the time she was simply a mother of five children with some time on her hands as well as what her son characterized as "deep faith and an unshakable passion for justice." Focus: HOPE's initial mission was simply to help keep the peace in Detroit following the riots that tore the city apart the previous summer, but the organization soon added food distribution, child care, and job training programs as well. The group began with no money and an all-volunteer staff, but over the years, through dedication and tireless lobbying, it grew to become what a Detroit Free Press editorial termed "a $23-million social service powerhouse that employed hundreds, fed tens of thousands, and mobilized an army of volunteers whose work made it a model for community empowerment initiatives worldwide." Though the organization's size and reach expanded greatly, Josaitis remained at the heart of its work -- until illness recently curtailed her schedule, Eleanor conducted every orientation for new staffers. But while her advocacy brought her into regular contact with corporate and political titans, Albom noted that "of all the politicians and bigwigs who feted her in recent years, the most impressive company she'd keep were the local folks who'd call needing help, food, money." And how she and her organization have helped -- Focus: HOPE's food program serves an estimated 500,000 people yearly in a setting that mimics a grocery store.
Perhaps the most powerful testimony to Eleanor Josaitis's expanded map is a personal choice that she and her husband made back in 1968. After the riots, "white flight" accelerated and Detroit began hemorrhaging middle-class residents. Yet it was at precisely that moment that the Josaitises left their comfortable suburban abode and moved back into the city. It was a decision that friends and family found shocking and confusing -- so much so that Eleanor's own mother even sought to take her children away from her. That's the definition of making a commitment to reach beyond the borders we all accept without questioning... and doing so in your own community.
Even if we don't possess the dynamism or commitment of Eleanor Josaitis, we all can take steps toward reaching out to others. Mitch Albom nicely sums up what we can learn from her: "As dogged as she was, Eleanor would tell you she was nothing special. And this may be her greatest legacy. Because she proved you don't need a degree, a license, or an election to help people. You don't need to be 'special.' You just need to be human and decent and unable to live among the poor or downtrodden without lifting a hand to make a difference."
* * *
It has now been well publicized that Tiger Woods recently fired his longtime caddie Steve Williams. For 13 years Williams carried the bag for Woods, a period which included 13 of Woods' 14 major victories. The dismissal came suddenly, unexpectedly, and without explanation. Further, it came after Woods' two-year hiatus from golf after his sex scandal and physical rehabilitation for an injured knee. Williams was understandably distraught and upset, saying, "I've wasted the last two years of my life. I've stuck by Tiger and been incredibly loyal." In response Woods would only say, "I felt it was time to change things up a little."
One can only wonder if Joseph felt the same disbelief and betrayal as Williams when the coins were being exchanged between the Egyptians and his brothers. The son who was closet to his father's heart and loyal to his brothers was now sold into slavery.
* * *
In 1991 Michael Weisser was living in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife and three of their five children, serving as spiritual leader and cantor at the South Street Temple, the oldest Jewish congregation in Lincoln.
One Sunday morning as they were moving into their new home, Mr. and Mrs. Weisser received a phone call and heard a man's voice say: "If you move in, you'll be sorry, Jew Boy." Two days later a thick packet of racist and anti-Semitic literature, covered with swastikas, arrived in the mail with an unsigned card that read: "The KKK is watching you, scum."
The message was from Larry Trapp, the Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska. At 42, Trapp was a nearly blind double amputee who was confined to a wheelchair and lived in a cramped apartment.
Weisser discovered who had sent the messages, and he decided to call Trapp and begin a dialogue if he could. Trapp refused to take the calls, so the cantor would simply leave positive, loving messages like: "Larry, there's a lot of love out there. You're not getting any of it. Don't you want some?" One day when Larry Trapp actually answered the phone, a shocked Weisser said that he understood that Trapp was wheelchair-bound and asked him if he needed a ride to the grocery store.
Trapp declined the offer but the next day he called the Weissers and said, "I want to get out of what I'm doing, but I don't know how." Weisser drove immediately to Trapp's apartment, where they talked for more than three hours and a friendship began to develop.
Within the next year Larry Trapp renounced the Ku Klux Klan, apologized to the people he had hurt, and converted to Judaism. As his health continued to deteriorate the Weissers became his caregivers. Finally Trapp moved into their home, where he died less than a year after he sent the anti-Semitic literature to the cantor.
This amazing story of forgiveness, reconciliation, and friendship is told in detail in the book Not by the Sword: How the Love of a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman by Kathryn Watterson.
* * *
Never have two Christian leaders been so different and yet so successful in their respective ministries: Bill Bright was the founder of Campus Crusade. He was an evangelical Christian and very conservative in both his theology and his politics. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners magazine, is also an evangelical Christian, but he is moderate in theology and very liberal in his politics.
In 1976, long before the Moral Majority or the Christian Coalition, Bill Bright met with the very (some say extreme) conservative congressman John Conlan to talk about mobilizing evangelical Christians for the purpose of influencing conservative politics in the United States. When Jim Wallis got wind of this alliance, he investigated and ended up writing an expose for his magazine. The article, titled "The Plan to Save America," was featured on the cover. Though it was exhaustively researched and documented, Bright was embarrassed by the article. He and Wallis became adversaries, if not outright enemies.
After some years of animosity and avoidance, Jim Wallis one day discovered that he and Bill Bright were staying in the same hotel during a conference, and he went to Bright and apologized for not making an effort to bridge the estrangement that was keeping them apart. Bright responded by apologizing for not reaching out to Wallis when opportunities had presented themselves. They continued to talk that day and discovered that they both had a profound need and desire to reach out more effectively to the poor, and they agreed to work together in that cause.
By this time Bill Bright was over 80 years old and his health was failing. He died just a few months after their reconciliation. On the day after Bright died, Jim Wallis received a donation of $1,000 for Sojourners magazine. One of the last things Bill Bright had done in his life was to write that check.
In an editorial in Sojourners magazine, Jim Wallis sums up the story this way: "I will never again deny the prospect of coming together with those with whom I disagree. It is indeed the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to break down the walls between us."
* * *
When poet Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning, their wedding was held in secret because her family, especially her tyrannical father, did not approve. Immediately after the nuptials the Brownings sailed for Italy, where they lived for the rest of their lives.
Elizabeth never gave up, however, on the prospect of being reconciled with her family, who had by then disowned her. She wrote letters to her mother and father nearly every week but never received a reply.
Near their tenth wedding anniversary, the Brownings received a large parcel in the mail with a return address from Elizabeth's father. They opened it, excited at the prospect of what it might contain -- only to have their excitement extinguished, their hope crushed. The parcel contained every letter Elizabeth had written to her parents. Not one had been opened.
Is there a sadder story than one of an opportunity for reconciliation between parent and child that is lost because of human pride and vanity?
* * *
Iraq's first new Christian church since the U.S.-led invasion opened its doors in the poor Christian neighborhood of the northern city of Kirkuk in July. The new St. Paul's Church serves a community of about 200 Christian families who fled to Kirkuk from other parts of the country in an attempt to escape the war and persecution.
In a symbolic gesture of solidarity with the Christian community, the Muslim imam of Kirkuk recited a prayer before the congregation of about 300, asking God for peace and security for Kirkuk and the rest of Iraq.
(Despite the significant community support, this hasn't deterred attacks against Iraqi Christians -- just last week a car bomb exploded outside another church in Kirkuk, wounding 23, and car bombs outside two other churches in downtown Kirkuk were disabled before they could detonate.)
* * *
In 1984 Sudan and Ethiopia were hit with a drought and famine that threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, among them about 30,000 black Ethiopian Jews known as Beta Israel.
No one knows how there came to be black Ethiopian Jews living in the northern lake region of Ethiopia and some even insisted that they couldn't be "real" Jews, but when Israel heard about the famine their armed forces joined with the American CIA, the American Embassy in Khartoum, and some Sudanese relief agencies to airlift Beta Israel to the nation of Israel, where they were granted immediate citizenship.
The effort began in 1984 with Operation Moses (4,000 saved). Under pressure from Muslim countries, the Sudanese government shut down the airlift -- but it was secretly reborn in 1985 as Operation Joshua (1,000 saved). In 1991, when the Sudanese government was weakened by attacks from Eretrian and Tigrean rebels, the airlift was reborn as Operation Solomon and 14,000 more Beta Israel were airlifted to Israel.
Many Beta Israel believe that they are the last descendants of the tribe of Dan and today there are more than 100,000 black Ethiopian Jews in Israel, speaking Hebrew and English, full citizens of Israel who sincerely believe that they have finally come home.
"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity" (Psalm 133:1).
* * *
Virina Davis was in her lifetime a socialite, a mother of six children, a novelist, a newspaper reporter, a biographer, and a much-prized columnist for Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, The New York World. But she is best remembered as the wife of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.
Virina was iconized in the south as one of the symbols of the "Lost Cause" after her husband's death in 1889 but she struggled desperately to make ends meet. She had submitted some stories about her husband to the New York World through her distant cousin, Kate Davis Pulitzer, wife of the publisher. When Joseph Pulitzer invited her to come to New York and take a position as a columnist, she gratefully accepted.
While living in New York she was introduced to Julia Dent Grant, the widow of U.S. Grant, who lived less than a city block away -- and they became close friends. She also struck up a friendship with Booker T. Washington. Because of these two friendships and her move north, she was vilified in the southern press.
Upon her death in 1906, with the help of the Pulitzer family, she was buried in Virginia alongside her husband and honored there as a true "Daughter of the South."
* * *
Christie Hefner is the daughter of Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine. She was the former chief executive of the Chicago-based Playboy Company. She has always portrayed herself (and been portrayed) as sweet innocence in the world of pornography. She was to be admired as a professional business woman who seemed aloof to her father's debaucheries at his famed Los Angeles mansion.
This image seemed to have changed this past week when her husband, William Marovitz, a former Illinois state senator, was arrested for insider trading of Playboy stock. He is alleged to have profited $100,000 from confidential information he received from his wife.
Ms. Hefner's words to the public may have been ones of sweet innocence -- but behind closed doors the words spoken came from a heart that was defiled, fixated on money rather than righteousness.
* * *
Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn is apologizing across his state and the nation for a remark he made on a Denver radio show. Lamborn said during an open-mike session that to be associated with any of Obama's policies would be like "touching a tar baby". Though the term originated in the second Uncle Remus story, as Br'er Rabbit was tried to escape capture from a doll made of tar and turpentine, it has evolved to mean any black person or person of dark skin. The meaning from Uncle Remus, of being in a "sticky situation," has now been entirely replaced and it is now understood to be a derogatory and humiliating comment on black Americans. Lamborn offered as his defense that he was totally unaware that the word had racist connotations. Either a man of such stupidity should not hold public office, or more likely, in the teaching of Jesus, "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this is what defiles (Matthew 15:18)."
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: How very good and pleasant it is
People: when we live together in unity!
Leader: It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard,
People: on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.
Leader: It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion.
People: For there God ordained blessing, life forevermore.
OR
Leader: Come and worship the God of all creation!
People: We come and praise the God who created us all!
Leader: God is the gracious parent of all the peoples of earth.
People: We rejoice that all people are our sisters and brothers.
Leader: Let us care for all God's people with the loving care of our God.
People: We open our hearts and our lives to our siblings.
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
"God Whose Love Is Reigning O'er Us"
found in:
UMH: 100
"This Is My Song"
found in:
UMH: 437
NCH: 591
CH: 722
ELA: 887
"O God of Every Nation"
found in:
UMH: 435
H82: 607
PH: 289
CH: 680
LBW: 416
ELA: 713
"Jesu, Jesu"
found in:
UMH: 432
H82: 602
PH: 367
NCH: 498
CH: 606
ELA: 708
CCB: 66
Renew: 289
"Let There Be Peace on Earth"
found in:
UMH: 431
CH: 677
"Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life"
found in:
UMH: 427
H82: 609
PH: 408
NCH: 543
CH: 665
LBW: 429
ELA: 719
"God of Grace and God of Glory"
found in:
UMH: 577
H82: 594/595
PH: 420
NCH: 436
CH: 464
LBW: 415
ELA: 705
Renew: 301
"From the Rising of the Sun"
found in:
CCB: 4
"People Need the Lord"
found in:
CCB: 52
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who created us all in your image: Grant us the grace to accept all your children as our family and to care for all with the zeal we care for our own; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We come to worship you, O God, the one who has created us. As we sing your praises and offer our adoration fill us with your Spirit that we may love and care for all your people. Amen.
Prayer of Illumination
Send upon us, O God, the light of your presence that as the scriptures are read and proclaimed we may hear the good news of the gospel and turn our lives once more to do your will. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially the ways in which we forget that all people are our family.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have so many worries and cares about ourselves, our families, and our nation that we often forget that our true family includes all your children. We find easy excuses to not get involved with people we do not see every day. We see the faces of people in distress on television and forget them as soon as the picture changes. We have forgotten that they are our sisters and brothers. We have forgotten that you love them and desire their salvation, as you desire ours. Forgive us and quicken us with your Spirit that we may reach out in love to all. Help us to put action in our loving. Amen.
Leader: God is our loving parent and wants us to be whole. God grants us forgiveness and the presence of God's own Spirit that we might truly act as children of God.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord's Prayer)
We worship and adore you, O God, the creator and loving parent of us all. You have created us out of love and out of love you have made us your children.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have so many worries and cares about ourselves, our families, and our nation that we often forget that our true family includes all your children. We find easy excuses to not get involved with people we do not see every day. We see the faces of people in distress on television and forget them as soon as the picture changes. We have forgotten that they are our sisters and brothers. We have forgotten that you love them and desire their salvation, as you desire ours. Forgive us and quicken us with your Spirit that we may reach out in love to all. Help us to put action in our loving.
We give you thanks for the loving kindness you show to us, your children. We thank you for our creation and the beautiful earth that provides so amply for our needs. We thank you for each other and the love we receive though the blessings of your church.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our needs and for our sisters and brothers throughout the world. We know that many do not feel connected to you or to others. They feel lonely and alone in a world that does not care. Help us to reach out to those near and far and share your love with them.
(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
Jesus Helps Everyone
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
Object: a photo of your pet
Good morning, boys and girls! This morning I brought a picture of my pet. (show the photo and tell the children its name) I want to ask a question to the children who have dogs as family pets. Do your pets come around the table at mealtime and beg for food? (let them answer) I'll bet that sometimes when your parents aren't looking you sneak something for them to eat. Sometimes, maybe when you aren't looking, your parents sneak your pet something to eat too.
Your pet probably sticks close to the table during mealtime. He has great faith that sooner or later something good is going to come his way. Sometimes the pet waits and waits. It seems like he is not going to get anything but sooner or later a scrap of food goes his way. Thinking about feeding pets at the dinner table -- and their great faith and patience in waiting -- reminds me of our gospel story today.
The lesson is about someone who had great patience. It was a woman whose daughter was sick. The woman was not even a Jew. She worshiped another god. But the woman learned that Jesus was a great healer. She followed Jesus. She called out to him to help heal her daughter. Finally Jesus realized that this woman had great faith, even though she was not a Jew. She called to him to please heal her daughter. Finally Jesus said to her, "Woman, great is your faith." Her daughter was healed instantly.
This story tells us that Jesus' love is for everyone. It shows us that we must have patience when we pray for help. The woman never gave up asking Jesus for help. It took a long time. Jesus finally answered her.
The next time your pet is begging for food at the table, think about the faith your pet has in you. You must have the same faith in God. Remember that God's love is for all the people of the world, including you!
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, August 14, 2011, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
Team member Roger Lovette shares some additional thoughts on Joseph's act of reconciliation with his brothers as well as the Psalmist's plaintive call for "brothers to live together in unity." At a time when the fault lines of our national discourse are so apparent, and when politicians routinely engage in demonizing their opponents, Roger observes that we would do well to remember that we are all ultimately on the same side and that God asks us to reach out and reconcile with even our most bitter enemies. Roger reminds us that reveling in our divisions merely keeps us from working together to rebuild from calamities and create a strong future.
Our Maps Are Too Small
by Mary Austin
Genesis 45:1-15
Perhaps you've seen the iconic cartoon from The New Yorker that depicts a map of the United States -- as seen from a New Yorker's point of view. Drawn by artist Saul Steinberg, the cartoon has New York City as half of the map, with the rest of the country a bland square, the states jumbled together, with a few landmarks before your eye arrives at the Pacific Ocean.
It may be that most of us see the world that way -- with the place where we live vivid and clear, taking up half of our mental map. Our own towns and cities, even neighborhoods, are at the forefront of our minds. Our local lives take our interest and energy and our thoughts are filled with the events in our town, our neighborhood, our schools, and our state. Washington might cause us despair -- but at least it's far away.
The familiar classroom maps (Mercator projections, in map-speak) that render the globe flat and North America in the center may also shape our view of the world. The Peters Projection map, an area-accurate map that shows every country as its true size, is widely used in Europe, but rarely in the United States. This map shows the true size of the continent of Africa and its 54 separate countries, a scale lost in conventional flat maps. Its introduction was controversial -- there are many ways to translate the area of a spherical world to a flat map, and none are perfect, but apparently we like the map we're used to.
Yet, every now and again, God expands our spiritual map, if not our paper one. Every now and again, God calls our attention to the wider world in a way we can't ignore. The current news from Africa is such a call and it holds an eerie parallel to the Genesis story for this week.
THE WORLD
As the U.S. Congress has been squabbling over a deal to raise the debt ceiling, many of us have hardly noticed until recent weeks the march of thousands of hungry people across Somalia. In a region damaged by drought, famine has come again in an echo of the story of Joseph's brothers leaving home to seek food in Egypt.
Like Joseph's brothers, today's hungry people leave home and travel great distances to seek food. The U.S. government estimates that the drought and resulting famine have killed 29,000 Somali children under the age of 5 in just the last 90 days alone, a number confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control. The United Nations estimates that 3.2 million Somali people are in need of immediate food assistance to save their lives -- out of a population of 7.5 million -- and that 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished.
Complicating the problem, militants connected with the Al Shabab group have blocked food aid, arguing that there's no famine. The Christian Science Monitor reported that: "Planeloads of food have already been sent to Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, where sections controlled by the globally recognized government are seeing handouts to the most affected people. But great swathes of the rest of southern Somalia remain off limits to the main agencies, including the UN's World Food Programme. The problem is that Al Shabab, Somalia's Al Qaeda-inspired Islamist group, has repeatedly denied that there is a famine in their territory and refuses help from what they have termed 'Christian organizations' with 'hidden agendas'."
Many Somalis have fled into Kenya and Ethiopia, taking refuge in already crowded camps. The Doctors Without Borders website describes several places where the group is operating feeding programs. One person who received help -- a mother of six who walked nearly 150 miles to reach the camp -- told this story: "I heard that in Jilib there is a camp [for displaced people] with food distributions and that made us start our trip. We wanted to go to the Kenyan refugee camps, but we were not able to pay the high price of the transportation. Instead, we arrived in Jilib, hoping to get some assistance. We used to have cows but we lost most of our livestock four months ago. When we lost our last two cows, we set out from our village on foot. It took us 15 days to reach Jilib."
THE WORD
That woman's story -- and the stories of thousands of other people in feeding centers and refugee camps -- is a modern parallel to the story of Joseph's brothers.
We've been following of the unfolding of God's plans at work as Jacob becomes the patriarch of twelve sons, born of his two wives and two family servants. Finally the long-promised dream of becoming the start of a great nation, the promise made so long ago to Abraham, seems to be unfolding. But the sons of Jacob fight and are jealous of one another, and the brothers conspire to do away with Joseph. He's sold into slavery in Egypt, as an alternative to death. There he rises to power and prominence through his service to Pharaoh.
Along the way, Joseph apparently lets go of the bitterness he felt toward his brothers. When he has children, his sons' names (41:51-52) speak of his gratitude to God that God has allowed him to forget his sorrow and to be fruitful in a new place. As Joseph is living a parallel life in Egypt, making his way from prison to Pharaoh's service, the other sons of Jacob are apparently prospering as well. When the famine comes, they have plenty of money to buy grain. Their long trip to Egypt for food connects them again with Joseph, who recognizes them right away. He, however -- dressed in the style of Egypt's court -- looks like a stranger to them.
As writer Geoff McElroy notes: "There is no direct revelation of the covenant in the Joseph cycle, at least not to Joseph. Nowhere does God appear to Joseph and definitely declare that he was the person through whom the promise would continue. God instead had been working behind the scenes and on the down low, working through and among human plans and manipulations." Yet the presence of God is clear to Joseph all along. When he finally makes himself known to his brothers, he proclaims to them that what they intended for evil, God has used for good.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
With plenty of misery to go around here at home, it's easy for us to pay scant attention to this current crisis in Africa. Money is less a problem than ensuring the delivery of food to the people who need it and this crisis echoes past food crises in the same area. As the BBC notes, "In recent years, major famines have ravaged parts of Africa. The most badly affected area is in the northeast where the populations of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan have all been victims of periodic privation." Kenya in 1997; the Sudan in 1994; Somalia in 1992; Ethiopia in 1988; Ethiopia in 1984 and 1985.
Why care when it will only happen again? Why bother, when some perfect storm of climate, scarce resources, and unstable governments will bring another famine in a few years? And where is the Horn of Africa on a map anyway?
The story of Joseph and his brothers is a beautiful reminder that in God's world, the person who seems to be a stranger -- a foreigner, even -- turns out to be family. We may fall short of the evil Joseph's brothers intend, but we are often willing to live in a world smaller than the one God made. It's hard for God to use our efforts for good instead of evil, if we're bent on doing as little as we can.
A caller to a radio news show the other day recalled the riveting image from a previous famine in the Sudan of a vulture sitting beside a toddler, waiting for her inevitable death to come. (The picture won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for photographer Kevin Carter, who chased off the vulture after taking the picture. The photographer was so haunted by his work in places of violence and hunger around the world that he later committed suicide.) The caller said that he had printed out the picture and keeps it on his desk to remind him to pay attention to the needs of the wider world and to do whatever he can to help.
His map includes all of God's people. The story of Joseph and his brothers, now reconciled, with food enough for everyone, invites us to see the world with the same wide lens, and to do all that we can for one another. The stranger is one of us and the map of faith includes the entire world equally.
SECOND THOUGHTS
On the Same Side
by Roger Lovette
Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133
The debt-ceiling crisis in Washington is finally over -- yet no one seems happy. Congress has gone home for a five-week recess and more than a few wish they did not have to return to the Capitol. The stock market has taken a serious dip and much of the nation is frightened. Despite the give-and-take and the very grudging compromises of our financial debate, Washington seems to mirror much of the nation. We are a divided people. Some pundits, wringing their hands, moan: "We've never seen it so bad." Perhaps they have forgotten to read the Bible or even pages of our own nation's history.
This week's text in Genesis is the culmination of a long story. Joseph, his father's favorite, lorded it over his brothers. They grew angry and decided to kill their brother. At the last minute they changed their minds and sold him into slavery. (Not exactly a benevolent choice.) Their old father was told that Joseph was dead, and he was bereft with grief. Years later Joseph found his way into Pharaoh's court. In time he became a valued administrator, next to the Pharaoh in power. So one day his brothers, desperate for food in a time of famine, came to Egypt for help. They met their brother, though they did not know who he was. Their story is a wonderful scene of reconciliation as Joseph forgave his brothers and met their needs. This is one of the high-water marks in the Bible.
Scholars think that the words in Psalm 133 were written after the Exile. God's people finally were allowed to go home but their homecoming was not as they expected. Everything was in shambles -- temple, economy, farmlands -- everything. Rebuilding was hard work and many took out their anger and rage on one another. Some Psalmist writes in reverie to his divided people, "Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity." It was a call for harmony and solidarity for a people living with defensiveness and bitterness. How could the nation possibly rebuild if they were a divided people?
Both texts call God's people to a time of reconciliation and healing. Joseph, far from being a saint, reached out to his brothers who had tried to take his life. In affirming family and tribal solidarity, the nation was assured of a future. The Psalmist recognized that without working together, the task of rebuilding would be well nigh possible.
Despite our stormy history, our nation came together enough to write a Constitution and Bill of Rights that holds us steady even today. At various junctures in our history that nation has sometimes reached up and made the word "all" more than a dream in a document. If we are to move into the future as a strong people, we will need one another.
On their 40-year journey, God's chosen had to pause and stop and rest in order that the old and infirm and sick and difficult would not be left behind.
Reconciliation is at the heart of our faith. Jesus said that if we come to the altar with a gift and we have fought against our brother -- the gift would not count. We have homework to do. Churches are made up of all-too-human people who often have a difficult time with unity. But if we are to have a future that is strong, we must follow the way of Joseph and the Psalmist.
Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former United Nations ambassador, tells the story of an old farmer who decided to take two of the roosters he had trained to the local cockfight. Surely they would win -- the farmer had worked them hard and they were strong. So he put them in a cage and drove his truck to the cockfight. As he lifted the cage out of the truck to prepare for the fight, he was astounded -- in the cage he found nothing but feathers and blood. The roosters had killed each other. The old farmer shook his head as he observed, "They didn't realize they were both on the same side!"
We must recover the spirit of our texts. Our forebears knew it well when they stitched into our pledge of allegiance: "One nation, under God, indivisible... with liberty and justice for all." Genesis and Psalms remind us that in a divided time our task is far from finished.
One of the great illustrations of reconciliation in our time is the splendid story of Nelson Mandela. Incarcerated for 27 years by the apartheid government, after his release he became the first black president of South Africa. Many encouraged him to retaliate against the white citizens for all the injustice he and his people had experienced. He refused their pleas and gave the world a powerful lesson in reconciliation. He knew that the wounds of his country needed healing and that the only way forward was to bind the nation together. So he established a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" that sought to provide a complete accounting of the past... without seeking punishment against the perpetrators.
Furthermore, Mandela shrewdly took the opportunity of South Africa's hosting of the 1995 Rugby World Cup -- the traditional sport of the white minority, and the country's first time on the international athletic stage after years of banishment -- to bring the bitterly divided country together in support of the Springboks, the country's national rugby side. That story is beautifully told in the 2009 film Invictus. Interestingly, the word invictus means "undefeated" or "unconquered." (A documentary about that World Cup -- The 16th Man -- provides even more testimony about the power of Mandela's vision to bring mortal enemies to the understanding that they are on the same side. It features commentary from two former radicals, one black and one white, each of whom had been imprisoned for racially motivated killings. Both of them initially found Mandela's support of the Springboks unimaginable... but as they perceived its genuine nature and the effect it had on the entire nation, they each found their own perspectives completely changed.)
ILLUSTRATIONS
Working in the midst of a war zone is an inherently dangerous activity, as Amanda Lindhout discovered to her chagrin in 2008. Lindhout, a Canadian freelance journalist who bears a striking resemblance to Kate Middleton, was trying to document the suffering of many Somalis -- and one day as she, an Australian photojournalist, a Somali translator, and their driver approached a refugee camp, they were kidnapped by a shadowy group of gunmen. Amanda was held captive for 15 months under difficult conditions, with little food, medicine, or clean drinking water.
You might think that she would develop a deep antipathy for the country that treated her like this -- but during her captivity her thoughts revolved around how she might somehow be able to work toward making Somalia a better place that didn't breed routine brutality and violence. So when she was finally released in late 2009, Lindhout created the Global Enrichment Foundation as a vehicle for helping to build schools in Somali refugee camps in Kenya.
But actually returning to Somalia? That seemed entirely out of the question -- she'd administer the foundation from her home in Canada... but that was before she recently traveled to one of the refugee camps in Kenya and witnessed firsthand the famine's utter devastation. Despite her horrific previous experience, she immediately resolved that she had to do something to get help to where people actually needed it -- i.e., inside Somalia. So it was that she organized an aid convoy with enough to feed 15,000 people, and last week she accompanied that convoy as it crossed the Somali border.
Needless to say, the amount of personal courage Lindhout's mission required was immense -- but it's also a vivid demonstration of someone willing to reach out to those in need... even halfway around the world from her home and in a place whose dangers she was intimately familiar with. One can say without any reservation that Amanda Lindhout's map is definitely not too small!
* * *
One doesn't have to go halfway around the world to make one's map larger -- Eleanor Josaitis is a striking example of someone who made her life's work expanding the borders of people's maps right in her own community. She didn't waste time debating -- instead she just got right to work reaching out with a helping hand to others. In the process, renowned author and columnist Mitch Albom noted, she "employed thousands, inspired tens of thousands, influenced millions.... She started in a basement with a few friends, a housewife, and a mother who took stock of the world around her in the 1960s -- especially the racial tension in Detroit -- and decided she needed to help."
Josaitis, who passed away this week, was the driving force behind Focus: HOPE -- an organization that she co-founded with her priest in 1968. At the time she was simply a mother of five children with some time on her hands as well as what her son characterized as "deep faith and an unshakable passion for justice." Focus: HOPE's initial mission was simply to help keep the peace in Detroit following the riots that tore the city apart the previous summer, but the organization soon added food distribution, child care, and job training programs as well. The group began with no money and an all-volunteer staff, but over the years, through dedication and tireless lobbying, it grew to become what a Detroit Free Press editorial termed "a $23-million social service powerhouse that employed hundreds, fed tens of thousands, and mobilized an army of volunteers whose work made it a model for community empowerment initiatives worldwide." Though the organization's size and reach expanded greatly, Josaitis remained at the heart of its work -- until illness recently curtailed her schedule, Eleanor conducted every orientation for new staffers. But while her advocacy brought her into regular contact with corporate and political titans, Albom noted that "of all the politicians and bigwigs who feted her in recent years, the most impressive company she'd keep were the local folks who'd call needing help, food, money." And how she and her organization have helped -- Focus: HOPE's food program serves an estimated 500,000 people yearly in a setting that mimics a grocery store.
Perhaps the most powerful testimony to Eleanor Josaitis's expanded map is a personal choice that she and her husband made back in 1968. After the riots, "white flight" accelerated and Detroit began hemorrhaging middle-class residents. Yet it was at precisely that moment that the Josaitises left their comfortable suburban abode and moved back into the city. It was a decision that friends and family found shocking and confusing -- so much so that Eleanor's own mother even sought to take her children away from her. That's the definition of making a commitment to reach beyond the borders we all accept without questioning... and doing so in your own community.
Even if we don't possess the dynamism or commitment of Eleanor Josaitis, we all can take steps toward reaching out to others. Mitch Albom nicely sums up what we can learn from her: "As dogged as she was, Eleanor would tell you she was nothing special. And this may be her greatest legacy. Because she proved you don't need a degree, a license, or an election to help people. You don't need to be 'special.' You just need to be human and decent and unable to live among the poor or downtrodden without lifting a hand to make a difference."
* * *
It has now been well publicized that Tiger Woods recently fired his longtime caddie Steve Williams. For 13 years Williams carried the bag for Woods, a period which included 13 of Woods' 14 major victories. The dismissal came suddenly, unexpectedly, and without explanation. Further, it came after Woods' two-year hiatus from golf after his sex scandal and physical rehabilitation for an injured knee. Williams was understandably distraught and upset, saying, "I've wasted the last two years of my life. I've stuck by Tiger and been incredibly loyal." In response Woods would only say, "I felt it was time to change things up a little."
One can only wonder if Joseph felt the same disbelief and betrayal as Williams when the coins were being exchanged between the Egyptians and his brothers. The son who was closet to his father's heart and loyal to his brothers was now sold into slavery.
* * *
In 1991 Michael Weisser was living in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife and three of their five children, serving as spiritual leader and cantor at the South Street Temple, the oldest Jewish congregation in Lincoln.
One Sunday morning as they were moving into their new home, Mr. and Mrs. Weisser received a phone call and heard a man's voice say: "If you move in, you'll be sorry, Jew Boy." Two days later a thick packet of racist and anti-Semitic literature, covered with swastikas, arrived in the mail with an unsigned card that read: "The KKK is watching you, scum."
The message was from Larry Trapp, the Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska. At 42, Trapp was a nearly blind double amputee who was confined to a wheelchair and lived in a cramped apartment.
Weisser discovered who had sent the messages, and he decided to call Trapp and begin a dialogue if he could. Trapp refused to take the calls, so the cantor would simply leave positive, loving messages like: "Larry, there's a lot of love out there. You're not getting any of it. Don't you want some?" One day when Larry Trapp actually answered the phone, a shocked Weisser said that he understood that Trapp was wheelchair-bound and asked him if he needed a ride to the grocery store.
Trapp declined the offer but the next day he called the Weissers and said, "I want to get out of what I'm doing, but I don't know how." Weisser drove immediately to Trapp's apartment, where they talked for more than three hours and a friendship began to develop.
Within the next year Larry Trapp renounced the Ku Klux Klan, apologized to the people he had hurt, and converted to Judaism. As his health continued to deteriorate the Weissers became his caregivers. Finally Trapp moved into their home, where he died less than a year after he sent the anti-Semitic literature to the cantor.
This amazing story of forgiveness, reconciliation, and friendship is told in detail in the book Not by the Sword: How the Love of a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman by Kathryn Watterson.
* * *
Never have two Christian leaders been so different and yet so successful in their respective ministries: Bill Bright was the founder of Campus Crusade. He was an evangelical Christian and very conservative in both his theology and his politics. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners magazine, is also an evangelical Christian, but he is moderate in theology and very liberal in his politics.
In 1976, long before the Moral Majority or the Christian Coalition, Bill Bright met with the very (some say extreme) conservative congressman John Conlan to talk about mobilizing evangelical Christians for the purpose of influencing conservative politics in the United States. When Jim Wallis got wind of this alliance, he investigated and ended up writing an expose for his magazine. The article, titled "The Plan to Save America," was featured on the cover. Though it was exhaustively researched and documented, Bright was embarrassed by the article. He and Wallis became adversaries, if not outright enemies.
After some years of animosity and avoidance, Jim Wallis one day discovered that he and Bill Bright were staying in the same hotel during a conference, and he went to Bright and apologized for not making an effort to bridge the estrangement that was keeping them apart. Bright responded by apologizing for not reaching out to Wallis when opportunities had presented themselves. They continued to talk that day and discovered that they both had a profound need and desire to reach out more effectively to the poor, and they agreed to work together in that cause.
By this time Bill Bright was over 80 years old and his health was failing. He died just a few months after their reconciliation. On the day after Bright died, Jim Wallis received a donation of $1,000 for Sojourners magazine. One of the last things Bill Bright had done in his life was to write that check.
In an editorial in Sojourners magazine, Jim Wallis sums up the story this way: "I will never again deny the prospect of coming together with those with whom I disagree. It is indeed the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to break down the walls between us."
* * *
When poet Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning, their wedding was held in secret because her family, especially her tyrannical father, did not approve. Immediately after the nuptials the Brownings sailed for Italy, where they lived for the rest of their lives.
Elizabeth never gave up, however, on the prospect of being reconciled with her family, who had by then disowned her. She wrote letters to her mother and father nearly every week but never received a reply.
Near their tenth wedding anniversary, the Brownings received a large parcel in the mail with a return address from Elizabeth's father. They opened it, excited at the prospect of what it might contain -- only to have their excitement extinguished, their hope crushed. The parcel contained every letter Elizabeth had written to her parents. Not one had been opened.
Is there a sadder story than one of an opportunity for reconciliation between parent and child that is lost because of human pride and vanity?
* * *
Iraq's first new Christian church since the U.S.-led invasion opened its doors in the poor Christian neighborhood of the northern city of Kirkuk in July. The new St. Paul's Church serves a community of about 200 Christian families who fled to Kirkuk from other parts of the country in an attempt to escape the war and persecution.
In a symbolic gesture of solidarity with the Christian community, the Muslim imam of Kirkuk recited a prayer before the congregation of about 300, asking God for peace and security for Kirkuk and the rest of Iraq.
(Despite the significant community support, this hasn't deterred attacks against Iraqi Christians -- just last week a car bomb exploded outside another church in Kirkuk, wounding 23, and car bombs outside two other churches in downtown Kirkuk were disabled before they could detonate.)
* * *
In 1984 Sudan and Ethiopia were hit with a drought and famine that threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, among them about 30,000 black Ethiopian Jews known as Beta Israel.
No one knows how there came to be black Ethiopian Jews living in the northern lake region of Ethiopia and some even insisted that they couldn't be "real" Jews, but when Israel heard about the famine their armed forces joined with the American CIA, the American Embassy in Khartoum, and some Sudanese relief agencies to airlift Beta Israel to the nation of Israel, where they were granted immediate citizenship.
The effort began in 1984 with Operation Moses (4,000 saved). Under pressure from Muslim countries, the Sudanese government shut down the airlift -- but it was secretly reborn in 1985 as Operation Joshua (1,000 saved). In 1991, when the Sudanese government was weakened by attacks from Eretrian and Tigrean rebels, the airlift was reborn as Operation Solomon and 14,000 more Beta Israel were airlifted to Israel.
Many Beta Israel believe that they are the last descendants of the tribe of Dan and today there are more than 100,000 black Ethiopian Jews in Israel, speaking Hebrew and English, full citizens of Israel who sincerely believe that they have finally come home.
"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity" (Psalm 133:1).
* * *
Virina Davis was in her lifetime a socialite, a mother of six children, a novelist, a newspaper reporter, a biographer, and a much-prized columnist for Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, The New York World. But she is best remembered as the wife of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.
Virina was iconized in the south as one of the symbols of the "Lost Cause" after her husband's death in 1889 but she struggled desperately to make ends meet. She had submitted some stories about her husband to the New York World through her distant cousin, Kate Davis Pulitzer, wife of the publisher. When Joseph Pulitzer invited her to come to New York and take a position as a columnist, she gratefully accepted.
While living in New York she was introduced to Julia Dent Grant, the widow of U.S. Grant, who lived less than a city block away -- and they became close friends. She also struck up a friendship with Booker T. Washington. Because of these two friendships and her move north, she was vilified in the southern press.
Upon her death in 1906, with the help of the Pulitzer family, she was buried in Virginia alongside her husband and honored there as a true "Daughter of the South."
* * *
Christie Hefner is the daughter of Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine. She was the former chief executive of the Chicago-based Playboy Company. She has always portrayed herself (and been portrayed) as sweet innocence in the world of pornography. She was to be admired as a professional business woman who seemed aloof to her father's debaucheries at his famed Los Angeles mansion.
This image seemed to have changed this past week when her husband, William Marovitz, a former Illinois state senator, was arrested for insider trading of Playboy stock. He is alleged to have profited $100,000 from confidential information he received from his wife.
Ms. Hefner's words to the public may have been ones of sweet innocence -- but behind closed doors the words spoken came from a heart that was defiled, fixated on money rather than righteousness.
* * *
Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn is apologizing across his state and the nation for a remark he made on a Denver radio show. Lamborn said during an open-mike session that to be associated with any of Obama's policies would be like "touching a tar baby". Though the term originated in the second Uncle Remus story, as Br'er Rabbit was tried to escape capture from a doll made of tar and turpentine, it has evolved to mean any black person or person of dark skin. The meaning from Uncle Remus, of being in a "sticky situation," has now been entirely replaced and it is now understood to be a derogatory and humiliating comment on black Americans. Lamborn offered as his defense that he was totally unaware that the word had racist connotations. Either a man of such stupidity should not hold public office, or more likely, in the teaching of Jesus, "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this is what defiles (Matthew 15:18)."
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: How very good and pleasant it is
People: when we live together in unity!
Leader: It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard,
People: on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.
Leader: It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion.
People: For there God ordained blessing, life forevermore.
OR
Leader: Come and worship the God of all creation!
People: We come and praise the God who created us all!
Leader: God is the gracious parent of all the peoples of earth.
People: We rejoice that all people are our sisters and brothers.
Leader: Let us care for all God's people with the loving care of our God.
People: We open our hearts and our lives to our siblings.
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
"God Whose Love Is Reigning O'er Us"
found in:
UMH: 100
"This Is My Song"
found in:
UMH: 437
NCH: 591
CH: 722
ELA: 887
"O God of Every Nation"
found in:
UMH: 435
H82: 607
PH: 289
CH: 680
LBW: 416
ELA: 713
"Jesu, Jesu"
found in:
UMH: 432
H82: 602
PH: 367
NCH: 498
CH: 606
ELA: 708
CCB: 66
Renew: 289
"Let There Be Peace on Earth"
found in:
UMH: 431
CH: 677
"Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life"
found in:
UMH: 427
H82: 609
PH: 408
NCH: 543
CH: 665
LBW: 429
ELA: 719
"God of Grace and God of Glory"
found in:
UMH: 577
H82: 594/595
PH: 420
NCH: 436
CH: 464
LBW: 415
ELA: 705
Renew: 301
"From the Rising of the Sun"
found in:
CCB: 4
"People Need the Lord"
found in:
CCB: 52
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who created us all in your image: Grant us the grace to accept all your children as our family and to care for all with the zeal we care for our own; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We come to worship you, O God, the one who has created us. As we sing your praises and offer our adoration fill us with your Spirit that we may love and care for all your people. Amen.
Prayer of Illumination
Send upon us, O God, the light of your presence that as the scriptures are read and proclaimed we may hear the good news of the gospel and turn our lives once more to do your will. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially the ways in which we forget that all people are our family.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have so many worries and cares about ourselves, our families, and our nation that we often forget that our true family includes all your children. We find easy excuses to not get involved with people we do not see every day. We see the faces of people in distress on television and forget them as soon as the picture changes. We have forgotten that they are our sisters and brothers. We have forgotten that you love them and desire their salvation, as you desire ours. Forgive us and quicken us with your Spirit that we may reach out in love to all. Help us to put action in our loving. Amen.
Leader: God is our loving parent and wants us to be whole. God grants us forgiveness and the presence of God's own Spirit that we might truly act as children of God.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord's Prayer)
We worship and adore you, O God, the creator and loving parent of us all. You have created us out of love and out of love you have made us your children.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have so many worries and cares about ourselves, our families, and our nation that we often forget that our true family includes all your children. We find easy excuses to not get involved with people we do not see every day. We see the faces of people in distress on television and forget them as soon as the picture changes. We have forgotten that they are our sisters and brothers. We have forgotten that you love them and desire their salvation, as you desire ours. Forgive us and quicken us with your Spirit that we may reach out in love to all. Help us to put action in our loving.
We give you thanks for the loving kindness you show to us, your children. We thank you for our creation and the beautiful earth that provides so amply for our needs. We thank you for each other and the love we receive though the blessings of your church.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our needs and for our sisters and brothers throughout the world. We know that many do not feel connected to you or to others. They feel lonely and alone in a world that does not care. Help us to reach out to those near and far and share your love with them.
(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
Jesus Helps Everyone
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
Object: a photo of your pet
Good morning, boys and girls! This morning I brought a picture of my pet. (show the photo and tell the children its name) I want to ask a question to the children who have dogs as family pets. Do your pets come around the table at mealtime and beg for food? (let them answer) I'll bet that sometimes when your parents aren't looking you sneak something for them to eat. Sometimes, maybe when you aren't looking, your parents sneak your pet something to eat too.
Your pet probably sticks close to the table during mealtime. He has great faith that sooner or later something good is going to come his way. Sometimes the pet waits and waits. It seems like he is not going to get anything but sooner or later a scrap of food goes his way. Thinking about feeding pets at the dinner table -- and their great faith and patience in waiting -- reminds me of our gospel story today.
The lesson is about someone who had great patience. It was a woman whose daughter was sick. The woman was not even a Jew. She worshiped another god. But the woman learned that Jesus was a great healer. She followed Jesus. She called out to him to help heal her daughter. Finally Jesus realized that this woman had great faith, even though she was not a Jew. She called to him to please heal her daughter. Finally Jesus said to her, "Woman, great is your faith." Her daughter was healed instantly.
This story tells us that Jesus' love is for everyone. It shows us that we must have patience when we pray for help. The woman never gave up asking Jesus for help. It took a long time. Jesus finally answered her.
The next time your pet is begging for food at the table, think about the faith your pet has in you. You must have the same faith in God. Remember that God's love is for all the people of the world, including you!
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The Immediate Word, August 14, 2011, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
