Immediate Word

For June 20, 2021:

• Underdog? by Tom Willadsen — It’s a more satisfying story if we don’t consider what David brought to the fight, but the outcome was never really in doubt.
• A Non-Anxious Presence by Dean Feldmeyer — An anxious world longs for non-anxious leaders to help us discover the solutions to our problems.
• Sermon illustrations by Katy Stenta, Mary Austin, Chris Keating.
• Worship resources by George Reed.
• Children's sermon: Calming the Storms by Quantisha Mason-Doll.

Underdog?
by Tom Willadsen
1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49

You all know the story: David the callow shepherd boy uses his sling to defeat the Philistines’ nine-and-a-half foot tall giant against all odds. But could the story have gone any other route? Think about it: “Giant crushes teenager” would hardly be a story worth repeating. What gives this story its power, its resonance? It is that its readers have precisely the limited vision that the giant brought to the battlefield. David was the original underdog, but like underdogs that prevail he had advantages that were not obvious.

In the Scriptures
The church I serve just resumed in-person worship with singing a few weeks ago. We’re getting reacquainted with one another. We’re also getting reacquainted with scripture.

Goliath: How tall, how wide, how high?
It is not precisely clear how tall and strong Goliath was. The NRSV says he was “six cubits and a span,” for an approximate height of 9' 6". His mail weighed 5,000 shekels, scholars have proposed a range of from 90 to 220 lbs. The head of his spear weighed 600 shekels, which weighed somewhere between 11 and 27 lbs.

The Bible has David kill Goliath twice. In v. 49 the stone that David hurled sank into Goliath’s forehead and he fell prostrate. In v. 50 it states explicitly that the stone killed Goliath. In v. 51 David ran to the fallen giant, killed him with his own sword, then cut off his head as a trophy. Sort of belies the aura of callow innocence we have assigned to David, don’t you think?

Clearly, Goliath was big and strong — and cocky. He trash-talked the Israelites with a style worthy of a professional wrestler. Of course, the taunting made David’s killing of the giant especially satisfying.

David was the original underdog. I grew up watching Underdog cartoons, a series that has not aged well. I did not understand the origin of the term “underdog.” The mild-mannered shoe shine boy who would transform into a caped canine superhero to rescue Sweet Polly Purebred from the likes of Simon Bar Sinister was a juvenile version of a story that Americans have always loved.

In 1957 a Little League team from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico received three-day passes from the US consul to cross the border and play a team from McAllen, Texas. The plan was to play for one day and sight-see for two. The team won, and kept on winning! Their passes expired and their money ran out, but they kept winning tournaments against teams in the United States. The press dubbed the team “los puqueños gigantes,” — “the little giants.” They won the hearts of the American people. Their innocence and pluckiness were summed up in a newspaper interview. When one of the Mexican players was asked if he was intimidated playing the larger, and presumably stronger, teams from the United States, he replied, “We just have to play them; we don’t have to carry them.”

Theirs was an inspiring David-and-Goliath story: scrawny, Mexican kids who run out of money and need their visas extended, just keep winning against bigger, stronger kids with better equipment. (They also had an amazing ambidextrous pitcher named Ángel Macias who threw the only perfect game in the history of the Little League World Series, but that sort of undoes the underdog angle, doesn’t it?) [I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous!]

Horatio Alger stories were formulaic, predictable, shallow and hugely popular during the Gilded Age. They were our great, great, great-grandparents Hallmark specials. These rags-to-riches stories were written for boys, who consumed them rabidly. There was little plot variation: a young, hard-working, down-on-his-luck boy pulls himself out of homelessness by not succumbing to the vices that tempted other boys his age — smoking, drinking, pitching pennies. His clean living and moral rectitude are recognized by a patron who is spots the diamond in the rough and pulls him from the streets into the bosom of the emerging middle class. Hurray for the American way, and the American dream, where virtue, tenacity and the rhyming assets of luck and pluck can lift the right kind of hard-working boy out of poverty.

(A century from now literary scholars will analyze that cartoon juggernaut from the last century, Scooby-Doo, and draw similar insights about contemporary culture from the formulaic narrative arcs of its episodes.)

In the News
The United States is turning the corner in its fight against Covid-19. While there is vaccine hesitancy and pandemic weariness, rates of infection continue to fall. This week my county stopped posting the rate of infection per 100,000 residents, indicating that our public health system no longer regards the pandemic as a crisis. My state has given 90.29 vaccinations per 100 residents as of today. The number does not indicate the achievement of herd immunity because most Nebraskans have received Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses. In the past two weeks the number has inched up from 86.77. Is our success against Covid-19 an example of David defeating Goliath? With public health professionals steering society to healthy practices that slowed the spread of the virus and scientists developing vaccines with unprecedented speed in the role of David? Nah. Let’s not shoehorn the pandemic into today’s lesson.

Will there be multiple David and Goliath stories emerging from the Olympics in Japan this summer? Probably. It’s always a feel good story when an elite athlete overcomes obstacles, injuries and a troubled childhood to defeat the elite athletes from other nations who faced hardships of their own. It’s Horatio Alger in track shoes or swimming trunks.

In the Sermon
Even a cursory look at the story of David and Goliath shows that David would emerge as top dog, even though tradition makes us regard him as the underdog.

The Philistines’ champion was large and strong. His trash talk would make him a Hall of Fame bench jockey in Major League Baseball. He was hardly mobile. His mail was so heavy it would have impeded his movement. His spear was so heavy he could not have thrown it far. Even with his long arms one could keep from being stabbed by keeping one’s distance. He may have had poor eye sight; his armor bearer preceded him into battle. Goliath was ideally suited to win a fight with someone foolish enough to stand toe-to-toe in a straight up fight. The Israelite army lacked the imagination to engage the giant any other way.

David is the plucky shepherd boy in popular imagination. (I thought maybe the adjective plucky was originally applied to David, an allusion to his side-hustle, composing songs on his lyre during down time out in the sheepfold, but no. “Plucky” is just the adjectival equivalent of an Old English noun means courage in the face of long odds.) David, however, had several things going for him. True, he was young and good-looking, but he was an experienced assassin. He brought down bears and lions that attacked his sheep. Presumably he used his sling but he also informed Saul that he rescued sheep from the mouths of predators and “catch them by the jaw.”  

David’s greatest asset is no secret — at least to him. Here’s what he said to the Philistine giant before arming his sling and braining him:

You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army this very day to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand. (1 Samuel 17:45-47, NRSV)

We’ve heard about David and Goliath all our lives. Habit tells us that David’s victory took everyone by surprise. We’re used to seeing with our eyes. David’s the youngest of Jesse’s sons; he’s a shepherd not a soldier; he’s a musician; he’s ruddy and good-looking. Our eyes do not see anything like elite skills with a sling, nor confidence in the living God. Goliath didn’t see anything that threatened him. It was not what he saw that spelled his doom; it was his inability to see that made him vulnerable, and ultimately dead.

It was hardly a fair fight. We see giant vs. middle-schooler. It’s really Master of the Universe v. giant. It’s a more satisfying story if we don’t consider what David brought to the fight, but the outcome was never really in doubt.

Underdogs are underdogs not because they do not have advantages, but because we don’t, can’t, or won’t see them.


SECOND THOUGHTS
A Non-Anxious Presence
by Dean Feldmeyer
1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49; Mark 4:35-41

In 1910 British poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling, inspired by the life of adventurist and politician, Sir Leander Starr Jameson, penned one of his most famous poems, “If.”

The poem offers advice from a father to his son on how to be a “man,” in the early 20th century, British, stoic sense and, in one of the most famous and oft quoted lines, the poem admonishes the reader to “… keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”

Speaking as a pastor and a person who has been in various leadership roles most of my adult life, I can say without qualification, that I have had that experience more than a few times.

I’m standing at the back of the church, vested and ready to enter the sanctuary to lead the Sunday morning worship service and someone dashes up to me and says, “Dean, there’s no babysitter in the nursery.”

I’m tempted to hand the person my sermon notes and say, “Here, preach the sermon. I’ll babysit.” But, instead, I say, “Well, I guess we won’t have nursery care, this morning.” The messenger then storms off and shares with others how shocked she is that the pastor doesn’t care about the babies.

Or someone shows up at the trustees meeting in a hot rage about how someone moved the furniture in the parlor and didn’t put it back exactly as it was. I calmly respond that, if the complainer will wait until after the meeting, a couple of us will go with him and he can direct us in putting the furniture back as it should be. He responds, “I’ve already done it.” I thank him and we continue with the meeting only to discover, a few days later, that he shared with his friends that the trustees “disrespected” his late wife in whose memory he donated the parlor furniture.

There is a tendency among church folk to believe that anyone who isn’t as outraged, angry, anxious, apprehensive, agitated, afraid, worried, troubled, vexed, bothered, worked up, keyed up, and overwrought as they are must not care about the issue at hand. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

Today’s lessons from 1 Samuel and the gospel of Mark, make that case, in spades.

Two Non-Anxious Leaders
The Philistines were cavalry, chariot fighters who stood a better chance of winning the battle if they could lure their adversaries into the flat valleys below the hills. The Israelites were infantry who knew that their only chance against the Philistines was to lure them onto the hillsides where their chariots would be slowed and easily toppled.

So, they both stood their ground and shouted insults at each other, hoping to draw each other out, but it wasn’t working. Finally, hoping to get things moving and possibly mitigate some of the inevitable bloodshed of war, the Philistines offer a suggestion: Our best warrior against your best warrior, mano a mano, winner take all.

This sounds reasonable until the Israelites get a sight of the Philistines’ best warrior, a 15-foot-tall giant named Goliath, who, besides being huge, is a lifelong veteran of warfare.

The Israelites respond by cowering in their trenches and behind their ramparts until one of their number steps up, a young slinger and former shepherd, named David. He has, he says, killed lions and bears in defense of his father’s sheep and he can kill the Philistine giant as well, no problem.

The Israelites, among whom are his brothers, believe that David does not possess the anxiety, fear, vexation, etc., for which this situation calls. They ridicule and berate him for what they see as arrogance and stupidity.

The king even goes so far as to offer young David his own armor, which turns out to be much too heavy and awkward for the young slinger to navigate in. He needs to be able to move freely, he says. Besides, he has God on his side and it is God who will, ultimately, win this grudge match for Israel.

You know the rest of the story. David bonks Goliath on the head with a stone, Goliath is rendered unconscious, David kills and beheads the giant with his own sword. The Philistines, witnessing the death of their champion, flee and the Israelites pursue them all the way back to Philistia, winning the day.

David, the non-anxious presence in the Israelite army, is victorious.

------------

In the gospel lesson, the non-anxious presence is, of course, Jesus.

Having spent some considerable time teaching in and around the village of Nazareth, Jesus and the disciples decide to go to the towns and villages on the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee and, instead of going around, they take a shortcut, getting into boats and going across.

Jesus finds the rocking motion of the boat relaxing and falls asleep on the sacks of sand that are used for ballast in the back or stern of the boat. Okay, no problem so far.

But after a while, an unexpected windstorm blows up and starts rocking the boat to the point where the disciples are afraid it is going to swamp and capsize and they’re all going to drown.

Afraid, they wake Jesus up and, first thing, instead of asking for his help, they accuse him of not caring about the storm or the jeopardy it has put them in. “Don’t you care that we are about to die?”

We can almost hear Jesus rolling his eyes as he comes awake and sleepily rebukes the storm and then rebukes the disciples as well, implying that, if they had faith, they could have calmed the storm without bothering him.

Calm in the Storm: The Non-Anxious Presence
Psychologist and Rabbi Edwin Friedman, a proponent of family systems therapy, uses the phrase “non-anxious presence” to describe people who are able to stand in the midst of the anxiety that is cascading about them without surrendering and being drawn into it.

The most effective leaders, Friedman teaches us, are those who can be the non-anxious presence in an anxious system (organization or situation). Then he reminds us that all systems are, to one degree or another, anxious. Whether the system under consideration is a corporation, a softball team, a family, a scout troop, a classroom, a synagogue, or a church, it is going to experience anxiety. That’s just the way systems are. Anxiety is in their DNA.

The healthy leaders are not those who don’t care about the cause of the anxiety but those who have identified their own anxiety and processed it in a healthy and appropriate way so that it doesn’t paralyze them into inappropriate action or inaction. Healthy leaders don’t “buy into” or allow themselves to be caught up in other peoples’ anxiety.

I heard a pastor once say, “She was in a panic and I didn’t see how it would be helpful for me to stand beside her and panic, too. So, I chose to be a calm, reassuring presence, and it worked.” In other words, the pastor calmed the storm.

Friedman further defines the key to this kind of leadership as “presence,” that sense of confidence, poise, bearing, calmness, focus, and energy which effective leaders brings to any system they enter.

President Biden has worked to be this kind of presence in Washington, DC and, to a large degree, it has worked. His non-anxious leadership has given confidence to his constituency that he knows what he’s doing and is doing it to the best of his ability. His non-anxious presence is one of the reasons leaders of other countries have referred to him as a “breath of fresh air.”

But he has also and predictability drawn criticism as non-anxious leaders often do, for not being sufficiently anxious and not dashing about, putting out every little fire that crops up before him. This non-anxious posture is also what moved former president, Donald Trump, to call him, “Sleepy Joe.”

Self-defined, non-anxious leaders are often faithful and effective but they are not immune to the criticism that arises out of their anxious adversaries.

Finally, this kind of radically effective, non-anxious leadership is not limited to individuals. As our scripture lessons suggest, the church is called to be the non-anxious presence in the world.

The world is a roiling cauldron of anxiety, fear, doubt, and despair desperately in need of a non-anxious presence and it is only by being that presence that we can save the world as we are called to do. We have the faith born of God’s good news, faith that can give us, if we allow it to, that sense of calm confidence, poise and focus that have traditionally been known as salvation.



ILLUSTRATIONS

From team member Mary Austin:

Mark 4:35-41
Stillness
Essayist Pico Iyer says that he has spent his whole life seeking what the disciples ask of Jesus: stillness. He lives in Japan, and deliberately chooses a life that is as quiet as possible. When asked whether he meditates, he says, “if my wife were here, she would fall around laughing and say, “Krista, all this guy ever does is meditate.” Just because I'm a writer. And so she sees me, I wake up, I have breakfast, I make a five foot commute to my desk, and then I just sit there for at least five hours trying to sift through my distortions and illusions and projections and find what is real behind the many things I'm tempted to say. And I think a writer is in the blessed position because, in some ways, our job is to sit still and to meditate for a living. So although I don't have a formal spiritual meditation practice, I do spend much of my life in the middle of nowhere, stationary. And I'm really grateful for that.”

This life of stillness began for him, he says, “in my 30s, I noticed I’d already accumulated one million miles on a single United States airline. So I realized I have a lot of movement in my life, but not maybe enough stillness. And around that same time, our family house in Santa Barbara burned to the ground, and I lost everything I had in the world. I bought a toothbrush from an all night supermarket that evening, and that was the only thing I had the next day. And so I was unusually footloose. And a friend who was a school teacher recommended that I go and spend a few days in a Catholic hermitage. And although I am not Catholic, and although I am not a hermit, he told me that he always took his classes there and even the most distracted, restless, testosterone-addled adolescent boy felt calmer and clearer when he went there. So I thought anything that works for an adolescent boy ought to work for me.

And I got in my car, and I drove north along the coast following the sea, and the road got narrower and narrower, and then I came to an even narrower barely paved road that snaked up for two miles to the top of a mountain. And I got out of my car at this monastery, and the air was pulsing. And it was very silent, but really the silence wasn't the absence of noise, it was almost the presence of these transparent walls that I think the monks had worked very, very hard to make available to us in the world. And I stepped into the little room where I was going to stay, and it was simple. But there was a bed and a long desk, and above the desk a long picture window, and outside it a walled garden with a chair, and beyond that just this great blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

And somehow, almost immediately, it was as if a huge heaviness fell away from me, and the lens cap came off my eyes. And suddenly, I was seeing everything from great immediacy and it was almost as if little Pico had disappeared and the whole world had come in to me instead. And, I remember a Blue Jay suddenly alighted on the fence outside my window, and I watched it rapt as if it was the most miraculous thing that had happened. And then bells began ringing above, and it felt like they were ringing inside me. And then when darkness fell, I just walked along the monastery road under the stars, watching the taillights of cars disappear round the headlands to the south. And really almost instantaneously I felt I’ve stepped into a richer, deeper life, a real life that I had half forgotten had existed.”

Iyer says that many of us, like the disciples, are looking for a calm in the storm. “30 years ago, I would talk about going to Cuba or going to Tibet, and people's eyes would light up with excitement. And nowadays, I notice that people's eyes light up most in excitement when I talk about going nowhere or going offline. And I think a lot of us have the sense that we're living at the speed of light, at a pace determined by machines. And we've lost the ability to live at the speed of life.”

With Jesus, we have that possibility again.

* * *

Mark 4:35-41
Allergic to Stillness
After Jesus quiets the storm, the disciples are afraid again, with a different Greek word for fear. They’re in awe of him — and frightened. In parallel experiences, we find ourselves afraid of the quiet itself. We say that we have no time, and researcher Christin Carter says that we’re wrong — we just have no quiet time. “We have gotten really, really bad at just doing nothing. Look around: We can’t even stand to wait in an elevator for 10 seconds without checking our smartphones. I’m endlessly fascinated by a new series of studies where the research subjects were put alone in a room, with nothing to do. The researchers describe their work: In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.”

We are so afraid of quiet that, in this study, “Many people (67 percent of men and 25 percent of women, to be exact) actually gave themselves painful electric shocks instead of just sitting there doing nothing — after they had indicated to the researchers that they would pay money NOT to be shocked again. One guy shocked himself 190 times in 15 minutes.”

Dr. Carter adds. “Stillness — or the ability to just sit there and do nothing — is a skill, and as a culture we’re not practicing this skill much these days. When we can’t tolerate stillness, we feel uncomfortable when we have downtime, and so we cancel it out by seeking external stimulation, which is usually readily available in our purse or pocket. Instead of just staring out the window on the bus, for example, we read through our Facebook feed. We check our email waiting in line at the grocery store. Instead of enjoying our dinner, we mindlessly shovel food in our mouths while staring at a screen.”

We need the gift that Jesus gave the disciples, and yet we’re terrible at receiving it.

* * *

Mark 4:35-41
Learning to be Brave
The disciples’ fear of the storm, on a lake where violent storms popped up quickly, makes perfect sense. They have the presence of Jesus there to calm the tumult, and social science researchers now confirm exactly what Jesus knew. The first move in increasing our courage is to acknowledge our fear. “It's difficult to conquer your fears if you're unable to be honest with yourself in the first place about what exactly those fears are. Research has found that acting courageously requires an understanding of one's own anxieties and limitations — denial of fear does not support courageous action — and then choosing to work through them.”

Another step is to seek out the storms. “When it comes to fear, psychologist Noam Shpancer said, the only way out is through. And it's true: One of the most effective ways to banish fear is to repeatedly force yourself to face what you're afraid of. Research has found that this repeated exposure lowers the psychological fear response until it is more manageable or in some cases gone. Afraid of public speaking? Practicing giving talks in front of groups will help bolster your courage when faced with speaking engagements of any size.”

An added step is to practice doing brave things. No doubt the disciples got this, after they watch Jesus. “To build a courageous character, the muscle of courage must be continually strengthened. Aristotle, the ancient philosopher who focused most on courage, said that we develop courage by performing courageous acts. Recent psychological research also suggests that courage is an ethical habit that we develop by repeatedly practicing acts of bravery, according to psychologist Ben Dean.”

Traveling around with Jesus gives the disciples a chance to practice all of this; following him does the same for us.

* * * * * *

From team member Katy Stenta:

1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49
The Right Tools
This is the story my mom always tells about having the right tools — as David does when confronting Goliath. My mom is overly optimistic and ambitious. My dad tells the story of how they were planning their first open house for the entire church to come over and visit them — the pastor’s family. And it was then my mom decided to re-cover all of the dining room chairs. I have no doubt that the chairs were completely stained and gross. There were three preschoolers in the house. Also, neither my mom nor my dad is particularly handy. So though good intentioned, after a week of struggling, the day before the open house my mom had uncovered all of the cushions for the chairs, and was stuck trying to tack them in with tiny tacks. This was a small town — getting professional help was not an option and there was no big box store, or YouTube to seek advice. My dad, knowing she was desperate and having heard that a staple gun might help, canvassed the neighborhood to find one. He had luck. All the chairs — all 12 of them — were resurfaced in an hour. My mom always concludes the story with “Boy, having the right tools does really make all the difference.”

* * *

1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49
Authenticity
Adrian Monk is a TV detective with something like obsessive compulsive disorder. His memory and need for order is how he solves cases, and also why he needs a personal assistant/nurse to help him to get through the day. When asked how he does the things he does, he often replies “it’s a gift, and a curse.” To be proud of one’s authentic self is a confessional act, because it brings to light how the things that make you unique are both helpful, and sometimes a hindrance. As an extrovert I have the gift of words, the ability to speak up and the energy to do so on a regular basis — it’s a gift. However, when I’m overly tired or lonely, I often have trouble finding my mute button and speak too much and am not good at waiting my turn — it’s a curse. Being proud of your full self is important, it takes into account the authentic human experience of being both too much of some things and not enough of others. Sometimes being big is a gift — like Goliath, and sometimes being small is a gift — like David. When it comes to the LGBTQIA community, the pride in being one’s authentic full self is different from hubris. It is about authenticity, and confession, and celebrating one’s gifts. Hopefully if there’s something that feels like a curse, you also have times that it feels like a gift.

* * *

Mark 4:35-41
Slow is Fast
“Slow is Fast” is a mantra that is heard throughout NASA training in the United States. If you have a problem that you need to work on in outerspace, then NASA encourages it’s scientists to take the time they need to do the work. It’s interesting that a discipline that seems so different from rocket science, yoga, has a similar perspective. In meditation and yoga there is a prevalent idea that if you do not have time for meditation/yoga, then you need to double the time you usually spend on it. Rest is not an easy concept for Americans, we are the worst of all the rich nations at taking our vacation. We see rest as wasteful, but the irony is that working more does not increase productivity, as study after study shows:

Rest is necessary, healthy and fun. Jesus makes no bones about retreating when he is tired, he will hide himself up a mountain or on a lake and be utterly inaccessible to take the time he needs. Because he knows the truth — sometimes slow is fast.

* * * * * *

From team member Chris Keating:

1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49
Aiming at the Hedgies
The January chill that ran through Wall Street might become known as the day Reddit users took on the marketplace Goliaths. In a series of events nearly equal to an episode of Showtime’s hit series Billions, young and often inexperienced investors took aim at some of the biggest hedge fund managers around. Their slings pummeled hedge fund giants such as Melvin Capital Management, LP, run by billionaire Gabe Plotkin, while pushing up the stock price of the ailing retailer GameStop.

The stock had been worth about $6 a share a few months earlier. After the attack by the rookie investors from the “wallstreetbets” group, GameStock was selling for about $350 a share.

(Here’s a helpful recounting of the events that also explains the business jargon.)

The strategies were coordinated by a series of messages on Reddit, a message board website, and drove GameStock’s share prices up more than 323%. The company’s bloat came at considerable cost to Plotkin and other fund managers who had been short-selling Gamestock. The Reddit renegades were trying to roast behemoths they accuse of managing the markets at the expense of ordinary investors.

Millions of ordinary investors banded together to prevent hedge fund managers from profiting from Gamestock’s long-expected demise.

Melvin Capital lost 53% of its assets in January, and while it managed to staunch the bleeding a bit by the end of the first quarter, it still posted a stinging 49 percent loss. Melvin sold out of Gamestock, losing more than $13 billion.

The movement tried to promote the triumph of little investors against scheming hedge fund giants. But it’s not clear that the victory will be ultimately as satisfying as David’s tackling of the Philistines. In fact, financial advisors suggest this is not a viable investment strategy. Another writer has said the gambit by the wallstreetbets gang could have serious ramifications:

In fact, there are no clearcut heroes or villains in the GameStop story. For starters, both sides used the same tool: options trading. The hedge funds bought put options (“selling short”), betting the stock would fall. The small traders then bought call options (“going long”), betting it would rise. They did the same with other struggling companies, such as the movie theatre chain AMC Entertainment and the mobile device manufacturer BlackBerry.

* * *

1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49
The triumph of the mighty mites
A dirt-poor group of orphans banded together during the Great Depression to play football — often playing barefooted with a football made from socks. But the scrappy Texans pulled it together to post a 8-2 season that tackled some of the heavyweight Texas high school teams of its time.

It’s the sort of cheesy, feel-good story that demands to be made into a movie — and now it has.

Sony Pictures rolls out 12 Mighty Orphans June 18. Directed by Ty Roberts, the film features stars such as Luke Wilson, Martin Sheen and Robert Duvall. It is the true-story of a Fort Worth orphanage that formed a football team that soon captured it the football sized hearts of Texans and others during the dreary days of the Depression. It’s the sort of movie that may manage to bring people back into theaters this year.

Texas Monthly magazine comments that the heart and soul of the team called the “Mighty Mites” was coach Rusty Russell, who is played by Luke Wilson. Russell was hardly the typical Texas coach.

Russell was, then and now, an uncommon figure among Texas football coaches. Legend says Russell, himself an orphan, vowed to dedicate his life to children when he narrowly avoided going blind after a mustard gas attack during World War I. Wilson prepared for the role by studying tape of Russell and meeting with his grandchildren. The result is a refreshing change from the way football coaches are usually portrayed. Wilson eschews both the emotional, win-one-for-the-Gipper histrionics of many cinematic coaches, as well as the avuncular enthusiasm of Kyle Chandler’s iconic Friday Night Lights character. Instead, Wilson’s Russell has a quiet dignity. He’s soft-spoken, wears glasses, and gets called Mister instead of Coach by his young charges. Wilson’s Russell has far less interest in firing up his boys or winning football games than most on-screen coaches; mostly it seems like he just wants them to know that someone cares about them.

* * *

2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Truthful speech and the power of God
In chapter six of 2 Corinthians, Paul recounts the tortured moments of his apostolic career. It’s hardly an ego wall of tributes and trophies.

Great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities — none of this is the sort of stuff you put on recruiting posters for church volunteers. It’s hard enough to get folks signed up to help at Vacation Bible School — imagine telling them it might include beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights and hunger!

Paul’s convictions for the gospel drive him to acts of love and “truthful speech” encapsulated by the power of God. Truthful speech might be a worthy source for homiletical rumination this Father’s Day.

Writer Marilyn Chandler McEntyre cares about the interface between truth, faith, and language. Her 2017 book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies continues to be an intelligent and thoughtful consideration of the power of lies. A faithful stewardship of language, McEntyre suggests, can counter the challenging lies of our current public and commercial discourse.

The truth is hard, she argues, quoting Flannery O’Connor’s quip that “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”

The culture’s seductive pull creates a powerful current, McEntyre notes. In response, she poses 12 “strategies of stewardship” aimed at reviving the power of language and speech. These strategies help us to become doers of the word and not just hearers, notes a review posted at Spirituality and Practice. She argues that cultivating the discipline of listening is one of the essential strategies of unmasking lies:  

The best listeners I know pause over words. 'That's an interesting way of putting it,' they muse, or they ask, 'What exactly do you mean by that?' The consciousness that every word is a choice, that each word has its own resonance, nuance, emotional coloring, and weight informs their sense of what is being communicated.


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WORSHIP
by George Reed

Call to Worship:
One: God is a stronghold for the oppressed in times of trouble.
All: Sing praises to God, who dwells in Zion.
One: Be gracious to us, O God.
All: You are the one who lifts us up from the gates of death,
One: Let not the needy always be forgotten.
All: Let not the hope of the poor perish forever.

OR

One: God is here and welcomes us into God's grace.
All: We rejoice that our God is always with us.
One: In the midst of all of life, God stands with us.
All: We are never alone but are held in God's arms of love.  
One: Share the presence of God with others.
All: When we share God's love we know more of it ourselves.

Hymns and Songs:
O God, Our Help in Ages Past
UMH: 117
H82: 680
AAHH: 170
NNBH: 46
NCH: 25
CH: 67
LBW: 320
ELW: 632
W&P: 84
AMEC: 61
STLT: 281

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
UMH: 110
H82: 687/688
PH: 260
AAHH: 124
NNBH: 37
NCH: 439/440
CH: 65
LBW: 228/229
ELW: 503/504/505
W&P: 588
AMEC: 54
STLT: 200

God Will Take Care of You
UMH: 130
AAHH: 137
NNBH: 52
NCH: 460
AMEC: 437

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
UMH: 139
H82: 390         
AAHH: 117
NNBH: 2
NCH: 22
CH: 25           
ELW: 858/859  
AMEC: 3
STLT: 278

Jesus Shall Reign
UMH: 157
H82: 544
PH: 423
NNBH: 10
NCH: 300
CH: 95
LBW: 530
ELW: 434
W&P: 341
AMEC: 96

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

Seek Ye First
UMH: 405
H82: 711
PH: 333
CH: 354
W&P: 349
CCB: 76

My Faith Looks Up to Thee
UMH: 452
H82: 691
PH: 383
AAHH: 456
NNBH: 273
CH: 576
LBW: 479
ELW: 759
W&P: 419
AMEC: 415

Trust and Obey
UMH: 467
AAHH: 380
NNBH: 322
CH: 556
W&P: 443
AMEC: 377

How Firm a Foundation
UMH: 529
H82: 636/637
PH: 361
AAHH: 146
NNBH: 48
NCH: 407
CH: 618
LBW: 507
ELW: 796
W&P: 411
AMEC: 433

Humble Yourself in the Sight of the Lord
CCB: 72
Renew: 246

He Is Lord
CCB: 82
Renew: 29

Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship

Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is the foundation of all creation:
Grant us the grace to rely on your presence
so that we may calmly share your grace with others;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

OR

Praise and glory to you, O God, because you are the foundation of all creation. You are the steady presence of grace that allows us to calmly offer you to others. Amen.

Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to trust ourselves to your calm, strong presence.

All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You created us in your own image and filled us with your own life and Spirit and yet seek for strength and safety within our own selves. We seek for status and wealth and things to rely on when you have offered us your presence. Forgive us our foolishness and center us once more on you and your presence within and among us. Amen.

One: God is always with us and ready to help us. Lean on our God and know the joy of salvation.

Prayers of the People
We praise you, O God, for your constant love and presence in all of creation. You have made us in love and you never forsake us or leave 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. You created us in your own image and filled us with your own life and Spirit and yet seek for strength and safety within our own selves. We seek for status and wealth and things to rely on when you have offered us your presence. Forgive us our foolishness and center us once more on you and your presence within and among us.

We thank you for all the blessings you bring to us. You have placed us in a wonderful world that overflows with abundance and beauty. You have given us each other for love, companionship, and nurture. You have given us your own Spirit to bring us life and abundant joy.

(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)

We pray for one another in our need. We pray for those who have forgotten your loving presence is with them in all circumstances. We pray for those who struggle with illness and death and for those who are grieving. We pray for those who have so little because others seek so much.

(Other intercessions may be offered.)

All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:

Our Father....Amen.

(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)

All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.

Children’s Sermon Starter
Sometimes we have things to do that are scary. We may want to do them but we are afraid of failure. When we see a parent or friend is there with us it makes us less afraid. God is always with us and we are never alone. You might share some time when you were encouraged by knowing someone was with you.



* * * * * *

CHILDREN'S SERMON
Calming the Storms
by Quantisha Mason-Doll
Mark 4:35-41

Props: small wooden boat, something soft like a pillow or stuffed toy

(You can use the toy boat as a stand in for the children. The storm or the rocking of the toy boat is a metaphor for having big feelings that seem uncontrolled. The pillow can act as a physical manifestation of stillness.)

In today’s story Jesus and his friends encounter a big storm while they are trying to cross a river in a boat. How many of you have seen a big storm? Did that storm make you feel anything? Were you scared or did you have any other big feelings?

The friends of Jesus (the apostles) were scared of the storm. So scared in fact they thought they would not be able to handle the storm by themselves! Like the storm, they were having big feelings. They looked for their teacher Jesus. Do you know what Jesus was doing? He was sleeping on a pillow at the front of the boat. Can you imagine that? This huge storm is happening, all of his friends are scared, yet Jesus is peacefully sleeping. When Jesus woke up he assured his friends that everything will be okay. Jesus takes the time to calm the storm. He says, “Peace! Be Still!” God confirms a promise to us on this day. No matter how big the storm of your feelings might be, the Lord will be there to show you that the storm can and will be calmed.

Jesus then uses this moment to teach his friends how their faith can help them deal with their own storms. Jesus leads by example. By trusting in themselves and trusting in their faith Jesus shows that amazing things can happen.

Prayer
Loving God,
Thank you for teaching us that when we have big feelings it's okay.
Help us to be like Jesus the next time our feelings become big storms.
Grant us peace. Let us be still.
In your son’s name we pray,
Amen.


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The Immediate Word, June 20, 2021 issue.

Copyright 2021 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.