Water is Life
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
For October 9, 2022:
Water is Life
by Tom Willadsen
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Luke 17:11-19
“Take a bath, and then we can talk...” Can be a very healing, encouraging, nurturing thing to say to someone who is struggling with illness, depression, or simply having a bad day. Imagine how much easier Naaman’s life would have been if he had accepted the word of his wife’s servant. A simple bath, in the right water, would have washed his leprosy away.
For many people baths are not simple. Residents of Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, cannot drink or bathe in the water that comes through their pipes — water for which they are still paying! Residents of Florida and South Carolina are recovering from Hurricane Ian’s destruction. While hurricane force winds did considerable damage, storm surge and rain water caused much more destruction. The Mountain West and Southwest United States are experiencing the worst drought in more than 1,000 years. What is a person to do when taking a bath is no longer possible?
In the Scriptures
Leprosy figure prominently in the Kings and Luke readings for this week. It’s not clear exactly what disease or diseases the Bible refers to as leprosy. Whatever it was it was a profoundly disfiguring, isolating condition. I spent a summer as a hospital chaplain and one of my services was dermatology. In the late 1980s if you were hospitalized with a dermatological disorder it was ghastly and isolating. I learned to wash my hands a lot and keep a safe distance from my patients. That said, they were easily the most interesting and engaging patients I visited all summer. They were always alert and they had very few visitors. Having a friendly visitor who didn’t treat them like a leper (see what I did there?) made their day.
Conventions regarding contact with lepers during the time the gospels took place compelled lepers to keep away from society and shout “Unclean!” lest they get too close to people who did not have leprosy. It made sense for them to find community with other lepers. In today’s passage from Luke’s gospel the group of lepers includes at least one Samaritan, the common status of leper brought unity across ethnic lines.
Luke 17:11-19
It’s not clear where this story takes place. The area between Galilee and Samaria is well north of Judea. The reader assumes that all the lepers are Jews who would have headed to Jerusalem to show themselves to the priests and thus be restored to the community. It’s hardly surprising that one of them is a Samaritan; Samaria is much closer to where this story took place. It’s also hardly surprising that the Samaritan would go a different direction to show himself to his priest on Mount Gerizim. The point of the story, in keeping with Luke’s desire to include everyone in Christ’s realm, is that this member of the distrusted, foreign group is the one who turned around and thanked and praised God.
In the News
Water, water everywhere…and nowhere.
Water is in the news in two very different senses, separated by a continent.
On the East Coast recovery from Hurricane Ian has begun. Ian made initial landfall on the Gulf side of Florida on Wednesday, September 28. After weakening over Florida it gained strength over the warm waters of the Atlantic and made a second landfall in South Carolina on Friday, September 30.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Cuba lost power before Ian reached the United States’ mainland.
While there has been some loss of life in Ian’s wake, it could have been so much worse. The predictions for the storm’s track were mostly accurate and Floridians, for the most part, heeded the governor’s warnings to get to inland places where storm surge would not be a threat.
While meteorologists do not contend that Hurricane Ian was caused by global warming, there is clear evidence that global warming is disrupting weather patterns and making extreme weather events more frequent. Warmer water in the Gulf of Mexico adds energy to storms. Warmer air holds more water vapor thus causing more frequent flash flooding everywhere.
A different kind of water problem emerged in Jackson, Mississippi in late August following a major flood of the Pearl River. Flood waters from intense storms inundated the water treatment infrastructure leaving around 150,000 residents without clean drinking water. Water quality had been spotty in Jackson prior to the flood. A combination of neglected infrastructure, largely caused by changing demographics, prevented Jackson from being able to respond to the crisis.
Then there’s the drought affecting an enormous part of the Mountain West and Southwest. Climatologists are calling it a megadrought. The period between 2000 and 2022 is the driest such span since 800 CE. While climate change has altered rain patterns, a contributing factor is higher temperatures, which increase evaporation.
The drought is having major impact on agriculture, which consumes more water than any other user in the region.
I just moved to the Reno metro area. It’s fascinating to hear the residents talk about water. While they know it is essential to life and irreplaceable they continue to water their lawns morning and evening. A resident of Las Vegas, which is facing a much more dire water shortage glibly told me, “It’s not a water problem; it’s a distribution problem.” 2 million people living in a desert, during the worst drought in more than 1,000 years seems like a water supply problem to this outsider.
In the Sermon
Water is essential for life. We need water to live, but also to wash with. Water is essential for Christians because of baptism. Water is also a force of destruction and a symbol of chaos in the Bible.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Order says this about water:
The water of Baptism is linked with the waters of creation, the flood, and the exodus... [B]aptism is a sign of God’s gracious covenant with the Church. In this new covenant of grace God washes us clean and makes us holy and whole. Baptism also represents God’s call to justice and righteousness, rolling down like a mighty stream, and the river of the water of life that flows from God’s throne. (Book of Order W-3.0402)
In seminary my Baptism and Eucharist professor made it clear that the water used for a baptism should recall the peril of drowning. After all, one is baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. Rising up symbolically from the waters of baptism is a kind of resurrection, following the drowning of the old self. I knew I had nailed this when, following the baptism of my nephew, his grandfather said to me, “I thought you were going to drown the little guy!”
“That’s exactly what I did, symbolically. I’m glad you recognized that.”
The Book of Order states that baptism requires “visible and generous use of water” “The water used for Baptism should be from a local source, and may be applied with the hand, by pouring, or through immersion.” (Book of Order W-3.0407)
At a church I served early in my career there was a dear lady who had brought some water home from the Jordan River. She gave me a vial of it to use for my son’s baptism. It was nowhere near enough to be visible and generous. I added about a gallon of water from the tap. She was shocked, imagining The Miracle of the Multiplication of the Water until I told her I’d mixed her Jordan River water with that from the Loch Raven Reservoir. Twenty-five years later it seems an unimaginably extravagant use of water.
Naaman was reluctant to wash himself in the Jordan. What could possibly be special about its water? Surely the water of Damascus, his region, was superior.
How would this story play out in Jackson, Mississippi, today? Is water that isn’t potable safe for cleansing. Would you baptize an infant in water that you wouldn’t drink?
Water is essential for life. Water is life. Water from the Jordan destroyed Naaman’s leprosy, restored him to society and led him to faith in the Living God.
Water from Hurricane Ian and the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean are causing widespread destruction in the southeast portion of the United States. The absence of water is threatening the viability of communities across the southwest portion of the United States. What role do Christians have in ensuring that everyone has safe, affordable water?
Water can destroy. Without water humanity is destroyed.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Shawshank Babylon
by Dean Feldmeyer
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” Most of us remember that line from the movie, “The Shawshank Redemption,” rather than from one of King’s more obscure novellas.
Andy, a mild-mannered banker, is in Shawshank prison, riding a life sentence for a double murder he didn’t commit. He has every right to feel bitter and angry, and filled with despair but, somehow, he’s managed to avoid those feelings. He’s sitting in the prison yard with Red, an old con who has spent most of his adult life in the joint and has pretty much given up on himself and life in general.
Andy is sharing his dream of getting out one day and going to live in a little village on the beach in Mexico, but Red has given up on dreams. He has become institutionalized, he says. He isn’t even sure he would know how to survive on the outside. He thinks Andy’s dreams are just a distraction when all of his resources should be focused not on dreaming but on surviving on the inside. He, Red, has given up dreaming.
Andy responds that his dreams are what keep him alive, then he delivers that famous line. “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.”
I can’t prove it, but I think he stole that line, the message, if not the exact words, from the prophet Jeremiah.
In the Scripture
The children of Israel aren’t sitting in the prison yard. They’re sitting down by the confluence of the Tigress and Euphrates Rivers, the rivers of Babylon. They have gone there to weep and remember the days when they lived in the Holy City, Jerusalem, high on Mt. Zion.
“By the rivers of Babylon,” says the psalmist in Psalm 137, which we read last week. “There we lay down, and there we wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?”
They have been through a horrible experience. Their holy city and temple have been destroyed. They have been forced to stand and witness the murders of the king’s children after which the king, himself was blinded and taken away in chains.
Then they were forced to walk back to Babylon, some 500 miles, where they now live in the state of Chaldea near the location mentioned in the psalm.
They are allowed to live as they like and worship as they like. The only thing they aren’t allowed to do is leave and go home. Their new home, like it or not, is Babylon.
So, reluctantly, they find jobs and manage to scratch out a living but when the work is done, they assemble down at the riverside and weep over their losses.
One can easily understand the motivations of a few false prophets who tried to cheer the people up by promising them that their stay in Babylon would be brief. That God would not let the Holy People be forced to reside in such a fowl and pagan place. But this word does not cheer them at all. It makes them long even more for their home.
Word of this makes its way back to the prophet, Jeremiah, who is living in what remains of Judah, and he pens a letter to the exiles.
Thus saith the Lord…Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:5-7)
In other words: It’s going to be a long stay, so “…it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” Living is the better choice. Get a good job. Start a business. Find a nice guy or girl, get married, have children and (just to show he’s serious about the how long the exile is going to last) and raise them and marry them off to proper mates.
And finally, and this has got to sting. “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray…on its behalf.”
That’s right. Work not just for yourselves but for the city, the vile and pagan city of Babylon that you loath. Pray for it, too. Because you’re not going to prosper unless it does.
So, stop whining. There’s work to be done. Get up from the river bank. Get busy. Go to work.
Get busy living or get busy dying says Jeremiah. If you’re not doing one, you’re doing the other. And I strongly suggest the former.
In the News
What is your Shawshank? What is your Babylon? What is the worry that threatens to imprison you, that keeps you up at night and, when you’ve finally managed to sleep, waits in the dark and confronts you when you first open your eyes in the morning?
Vladimir Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if NATO interferes beyond a tipping point that he refuses to define. Those of us who are of a certain age remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and how we did drills in school where we were told to hide under our desks and cover our eyes and ears in case of a nuclear attack. And, being children, most of us believed that those things would save us.
Some of us thought it was silly and laughed it off. Some of us were terrified. Some of us had nightmares about flashes of light in the southern sky.
How worried should we be about Putin’s threat? Most experts reply with something like, “Worried but not too worried.” I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make me feel any safer.
I am writing these words on October 1, the fifth anniversary of the Las Vegas mass shooting that left 58 people dead and over 800 injured. Since then, this country has seen more than 2,403 mass shootings with 2,495 dead and 10,225 injured. And our political leaders seem either unable or unwilling to do anything to protect us from these massacres.
And while we’re thinking about that our friends and families are being beaten into submission by Hurricane Ian, first in Florida, then in South Carolina. Homes destroyed by wind and flood. Thousands homeless. More than 20 dead, so far. Schools, churches, houses, stores, government buildings, all gone.
Last week, one of my friends lost everything he and his wife own in that hurricane. His voice, when I talked to him, was thick with sadness and despair.
The next day, I talked to another friend, just a year older than me, and he told me, his voice cracking, that he has been diagnosed with early onset dementia.
Another friend called — this is all in the same week, remember — and shared with me that his 41-year-old daughter is an alcoholic and her drinking is destroying her life — her marriage, her career, her relationships with family and friends — and he doesn’t know what he can do, if anything, to help her.
Every one of these, my friends and those I have only read and heard about, is suffering in their own private Shawshank, their own private Babylon, imprisoned by sadness and worry. And most of us have been there with them if just from reading the morning news. It would be so easy for us to sit down by the river and just give up on ourselves and our lives.
But, we don’t, because…
In the Sermon
We are people of faith.
We do not place our trust in princes or politicians. We do not sit and weep while we hope for someone to come and rescue us from our distresses. We don’t throw our hands in the air and sigh and shake our heads at the sad and sorry state of the country and the world. We don’t waste time looking for someone to blame. We don’t frown and ask and them direct our attention away from the suffering of our brothers and sisters.
We fall to our knees and turn to the Lord in prayer. We ask God, “What would you have us do? What do you require of us, O God?”
And, if we are listening carefully, we will hear the voice of Jeremiah telling us to get up and start living our lives, such as they are. Rebuild your house, he will say. Hold that wedding you planned in a tent. Cook your meals over a wood fire if you must. Write to your congressional representative, your senator, your school board.
Hug your spouse, kiss your children and your grandchildren and live each moment of the life you have left.
Because, basically, it comes down to a simple choice, really: Get busy living or get busy dying.
And what God wants for us, is life.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:
Psalm 66:1-12
Our God Is An Awesomely (Complicated) God
“Awesome God,” the bouncy praise song synonymous with contemporary worship services in the 1990s, echoes the resplendent praise of God running throughout the stanzas of Psalm 66. The 1989 song topped the Christian music charts and quickly became a staple of praise bands. But while the song, now included in at least 16 hymnals, may feel repetitiously trite, the faith of its author was more complicated — and even controversial.
“Awesome God,” written by singer/songwriter Rich Mullins, helped propel contemporary Christian music into the commercial success. Mullins, who died in a car accident twenty-five years ago last month, had a complex faith that challenged much of the evangelical world he inhabited.
Singer Amy Grant has suggested that Mullins was “the uneasy conscience of Christian music.” In an opinion piece in last Sunday’s New York Times, writer Tish Harrison Warren examined Mullins’ complicated life and faith, noting that his defies easy explanations or unexamined assumptions.
Warren’s essay describes the “unflinchingly honest” way Mullins balanced struggles and temptations with an unflinching faith in ways that make him stand out from other Christian artists. “Yet these struggles did not lead him to abandon his faith,” Warren writes. “If anything, they seemed to make Jesus grow more luminous to him.” He was often described as “authentic” and “raw,” who was critical of the prevailing “insularity of evangelical leaders at the time.”
Mullins rejected elements of fame associated with success in the music business. Living a life of voluntary poverty, he instructed his accountants to donate the majority of his income. He challenged white, upper-middle class evangelicals to reckon with the injustices suffered by Native Americans. “Awesome God” notwithstanding, Warren notes that many of his songs were “honest and raw,” and devoid of sugar-coated devotion.
In 2014, one blogger wrote:
Rich Mullins was the Holden Caulfield of our faith: the one guy who refused to be phony. The one guy who refused to play the game. The one guy who questioned the status quo in a music industry often driven by image and sales. The one guy who made faith seem real rather than cliché to Gen-Xers hungry for something authentic.”
* * *
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Trusting the Jordan
The great Naaman is less than impressed with the solution Elisha offers to cure the general’s leprosy. Elisha refuses to put on a show to greet the general, and then tells the mighty military leader to take a bath in the puny waters of the Jordan. Compared to the great rivers of Damascus, the Jordan looks like a country creek. It’s one thing to lead a general to water, and quite another to get him to bathe. Clearly Naaman does not trust in Elisha or in God. Equally clear is the soldier’s dismissal of the Jordan in comparison to the waters back home.
Lack of trust is a recurring theme among those who experience wide-scale water crises. A new longitudinal study of those impacted by the Flint, Michigan, water crisis backs up anecdotal evidence that lack of trust in the water supply has long lasting impact. One in five Flint residents meet the criteria for depression, and one in four exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. The study also showed that a lack of trust in public health led to higher overall rates for depression, PTSD, and other comorbidities.
According to the Lown Institute, this study shows that the United States does not have a firm grasp on the connections between clean drinking water and mental health. The Institute recently said:
While no area is immune, these crises tend to pop up and persist in communities with less resources and display our significant equity issues in terms of infrastructure and support. Unless we address these inequities, unless we pour our resources into preserving the life-supporting systems like our water pipes and infrastructure, we’re going to continue to see these crises pop up in the coming years. And as this most recent study shows, the impact of failing to do so can last for years.
* * *
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Unsung heroes
While Naaman and Elisha grab the commanding roles in this story, it is the servant of Naaman’s wife who deserves much of the credit. Unnamed, and only heard in passing, the servant speaks to power from her position of powerlessness. She exhibits what Pope Francis recently called “the strength of the humble.”
The pope was speaking in the central Italian city of L’Aquila the day after he had elevated twenty new cardinals, including many from isolated areas around the world. One, Anthony Poola, is the church’s first Dalit (“untouchable”) cardinal.
“There exists no other way to accomplish God’s will than to take on the strength of the humble,” Francis said. Humility, he said, recognizes the divine source of true power rather than basing our worth on a position or special status.
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:
Luke 17:11-19
Gratitude
The leper who is healed by Jesus, and who comes back praising God, knows something important. Brother David Steindl-Rast says that our gratitude comes in two phases, and so, he says, “we really need different terms for our experience.” First, we have “the moments in which this gratitude wells up in our hearts…as if something were filling up within us, filling with joy, really, but not yet articulate. And then it comes to a point where the heart overflows, and we sing, and we thank somebody.” That’s “thanksgiving.” He says, “the two of them are two aspects, or two phases, actually, of the process that is gratitude.”
No doubt all of the lepers who are healed experience the first feeling. The one who comes back to Jesus gets both steps.
Brother David Steindl-Rast adds that is like a “vessel that is still inarticulate until it overflows… It’s like the bowl of a fountain when it fills up, and it’s very quiet and still. And then when it overflows, it starts to make noise, and it sparkles, and it ripples down. And that is really when the joy comes to itself, so to say; when it is articulate.” The tenth leper is overflowing with his gratitude.
* * *
Luke 17:11-19
Finding Things to Praise
The newly healed man who returns to Jesus is giving thanks for the life-changing gift of his healing. He has found, in this moment, what writer and professor Ross Gay would call “delight.”
Ross Gay set out to find something each day that delighted him. He says he thought, “It’d be a neat thing to write essays every day for a year about something that delighted me…one of the things that surprised me was how quickly the study of delight made delight more evident. That was really quick.”
When we start looking for things to praise, we will find them, much like the newly healed former leper.
* * *
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Fear of the Water
Fear of the water is not unique to Naaman — and neither is doubt about the power of a miracle.
The story is told of a holy man, who lived in a remote place, and relied on a young woman to bring him food every day. She, however, often arrived later than the holy man wanted.
One day after he chewed her out for this, she explained why she was perpetually tardy. The woman explained that she had to walk a long way along a river’s bank before she could reach a bridge that would carry her to the river’s other side.
So the holy man suggested that she, instead of crossing the bridge, walk across the water. That would save her time and perhaps keep her from being late every day.
From then on, she was never late. That, however, piqued the holy man’s curiosity. So he asked her how she now consistently managed to arrive so early. “Why, sir,” she answered, “I did as you told me. I walk across the waters of the river.” At this the holy man said, “This I must see. Let me go with you, child, as you return to the village. I believe I can surely walk on water, if someone like you can.”
When they reached the river, the woman boldly stepped into the water and walked to it other side. When she turned to watch the holy man, he hiked up his robe and stepped into the river.
However, after the man took a few hesitant steps he began to sink. So, the woman ran back across the waters to help him to shore. “What happened?” the shaken holy man asked her. “Well, sir,” she answered,“ you said you believed you could walk across the waters, but you gathered up your robes so as not to get the hem wet.”
Belief is powerful, for Naaman and all of us.
(Story by Linda Hutton, found at The Center for Excellence in Preaching.)
* * *
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Believing You Can
The young girl known in her early years as simply “Estelle” was raised by a single, widowed mother who worked domestic jobs to make ends meet. “Painfully shy and introverted from a young age, Estelle became an easy target for bullying at school, which led her to believe she was “ugly and stupid, clumsy, socially hopeless.” Her shyness combined with mild dyslexia made schoolwork difficult.
“Her teachers at Garfield Elementary School evaluated her earliest writing harshly, with comments like “Hyperbolic” and “You’re not even trying” scribbled in the margins. An elementary school teacher once asked, “Why include the science fiction touch? I think the story would be more universal if you kept to the human, earthly touch.” The teacher reported to her mother that, “She has the understanding, but doesn’t apply it. She needs to learn self-discipline.”
When she was twelve years old, Estelle watched the 1954 film Devil Girl From Mars, a sensationalist B movie that was so terrible it convinced Estelle that she could write something better. She recalls, “Until I began writing my own stories, I never found quite what I was looking for… In desperation, I made up my own.” As the possibility of becoming a professional writer slowly dawned on her, Estelle began her transformation into “Octavia,” whom she thought of as her powerful, assertive alter ego.”
We know Estelle as the best-selling science fiction writer, and one of the founders of Afrofuturism, Octavia Butler. Butler said, “The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was my own fear and self-doubt — fear that maybe my work really wasn’t good." Belief can hold us back, or move us forward, as it did for Butler and for Naaman.
(From Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte.)
* * *
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Rich in Time
“It’s going to be a minute,” God tells the exiles. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God tells the people to settle in to life in Babylon, not just for a few years. Get married, build lives, make your home here. God is giving them a wealth of time to imagine the future.
Futurist Jane McGonigal says that when we have an expansive time horizon like God gives the people in exile, it opens the mind to imagine more about the future. Being rich in time is a resource. She says, “I like to think of a ten-year timeline as a kind of cathedral or Grand Canyon for the mind. It lifts the ceiling on our imagination. When we feel time-poor, on the other hand, it’s like being stuck in a tiny, depressing room with no windows. We shrink ourselves and imagine less. We adopt “minimal” goals, which means we try to do just enough to avoid a bad outcome.” With a longer time horizon, we can dream bigger things for the future. This is the gift that God is giving to the people in exile.
(From Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal.)
* * * * * *
From team member Katy Stenta:
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Have you taken a bath?
When I’m really depressed, the last thing I want to do is take a bath. It feels like too much work to get clean — even though I know I will feel better afterward. As one of my colleagues noted, a common piece of advice for depression is, “Have you taken a shower?” It seems so simple, and yet it’s so hard. The energy to do self-care can be monumental. And yet, once I take that shower or bath, I feel about a million times better. My youngest sister was going through a particularly hard mental crisis, so I sent her all the things you need to for cleansing: soaps, hair care, brushes, toothpaste, etc. I wrote a note that said sometimes the block for self-care for me is that I keep forgetting to run to the store to get the one item I need to get the care done, so I sent you all the essentials to hopefully make that step easier. I wonder if Naaman was depressed on top of being ill and really needed to take that bath to get things moving. I wonder if that’s why God was like, take a bath and then we will talk.
* * *
Psalm 66:1-12
Praise the God of Responsibilities?
We are not raising children we are raising adults, my parents liked to say. Our suburban white neighbors in the Northeast were often scandalized by what it was my parents entrusted us with while we were growing up. We babysat from the age of ten, walked home in the dark, rode the train into the city by age 12, cooked on the stove and oven from an early age. Whatever helicopter parents are, after having spent three years in rural Arkansas, my family was not one of them. We learned to let go of worrying about feeling safe and put more stock in building responsibilities in ourselves. This is how Psalm 66 works. God is so great that God not only frees the Hebrews, but also entrusts them with burdens and gives them land. God is not raising servants, but a freed people. How great is our God?!
* * *
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Less Talk More Action
My teenager is the master of pulling you into an argument. I would love to say this is a skill they recently developed, but alas! No, all their life they have been skilled at sucking you into the definitions, so that you are so caught up in the details of the what’s and wherefores of who is right that you are in danger of never getting anything done. On my best days, I stop arguing. I nod along with whatever my eldest is saying, and then simply start onto the activity that needs to happen, with or without agreement. Because that action speaks more loudly than words. If I stop arguing, then my eldest complies. If only I could remember this more often… Timothy knew!
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by Katy Stenta
Call to Worship
One: Make a joyful noise to God all the earth
All: Come let us sing the glory of God, Let us give glorious praise
One: Say to God, How awesome are your deeds?
All: All the earth worships you, they sing praises to your name
One: Come, let us see what God has done
All: Come let us see God’s deeds among mortals
Or
One: God we long for healing
All: Help us to remember our Baptism
One: God we long for holiness
All: Remind us to love our neighbor
One: God we long for you
All: Remind us you are already here, Come let us praise our present God
Call to Confession
One: God cleanses us as many times as necessary, all we need to do is ask. Come let us confess ourselves to God.
Confession
All: God we confess that we are often like Naaman, reluctant to seek cleansing or healing. Or perhaps it is that we prefer special treatment. How hard is it for us to accept our baptismal status as beloved children of God? How hard is it for us to practice and enact grace and forgiveness? Teach us pray. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
One: God’s love never ceases, and God’s mercies never come to an end. Therefore we know that we are assured the good news, let us proclaim it to one another
All: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.
Prayer of the Day/Dedication
All: God renew us in you. Help us to center ourselves in you no matter how many bathings, healings and walks to the River it takes. Help us to identify ourselves not by the healings that are needed, but instead in the fact that we are beloved children of God. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Prayer of the People
God we long for you and your presence.
We know so many who are hurting and needing you,
Let us lift up those in need of special care at this time.
(Names and concerns can be added…)
God we also lift our voices in praise
For how awesome your deeds are,
We have joys to add to the list, and we lift them together here.
(Joys can be added here.)
God, we pray that you will bring healing and wholeness to the entire earth.
We give thanks for all that you are — and all that you are calling us to be.
We pray that you continue to call us to your kin(g)dom using the prayer your son taught us saying…
The Lord’s Prayer
Hymns and Songs
I went Down to the River to Pray
(extra not in hymnals)
There is a Balm in Gilead
UMH: 375
H82: 676
PH: 394
AAHH: 524
NNBH: 489
NCH: 553
CH: 501
ELW: 614
W&P: 631
AMEC: 425
This Is a Day of New Beginnings
UMH: 383
NCH: 417
CH: 518
W&P: 355:
I’ve Got Peace Like a River
AAHH: 492
BH: 418
CH: 530
PH: 368
O Christ the Healer
CH: 503
ELW: 610
Renew: 191
PH: 380
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
UMH: 400
H82: 686
PH: 356
AAHH: 175
NNBH: 166
NCH: 459
CH: 16
LBW: 499
ELW: 807
W&P: 68
AMEC: 77
STLT: 126
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
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMON
The Importance of Being Kind
by Quantisha Mason-Doll
Luke 17:11-19
Themes:
• Children as our tangible future.
• Being kind even when it is not easy
What does it mean to be kind? (Open the space to give examples of what it means to be kind.) Has there ever been a time in your lives where you found it hard to be kind to someone because they had been mean to you? Maybe you struggle with being kind to yourself after something really hard happens and you feel like you failed. Jesus shows us that we are all worthy of second chances.
Our story for today illustrates that sometimes it is hard to be kind after feeling hurt. The sick people Jesus heals made demands on Jesus. “Heal me — heal me!” But here is the catch — the people asking Jesus to heal them were outsiders of the community. They were seen as less good because of their cultural differences and their sickness. No one can blame them for demanding to be made better. It is not fun feeling sick or being seen as somehow different.
The moral of our story lies in the one person who noticed that they have been healed. They saw that Jesus offered them kindness without expecting anything in return, not even their thanks. Even though the larger group went ahead, the outcast (the Samaritan) took a moment to allow kindness to come first. This person realized the gift they had been given and the only thing they could offer in return was a thank you.
Prayer
Loving God help us to show kindness even when it is hard.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, October 9, 2022 issue.
Copyright 2022 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.
- Water is Life by Tom Willadsen. Water can destroy. Without water humanity is destroyed.
- Second Thoughts: Shawshank Babylon by Dean Feldmeyer. “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” Andy Dufresne in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King.
- Sermon illustrations by Mary Austin, Chris Keating Katy Stenta.
- Worship resources by Katy Stenta.
- Children’s Sermon: The Importance of Being Kind by Quantisha Mason-Doll. Based on Luke 17:11-19.
Water is Lifeby Tom Willadsen
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Luke 17:11-19
“Take a bath, and then we can talk...” Can be a very healing, encouraging, nurturing thing to say to someone who is struggling with illness, depression, or simply having a bad day. Imagine how much easier Naaman’s life would have been if he had accepted the word of his wife’s servant. A simple bath, in the right water, would have washed his leprosy away.
For many people baths are not simple. Residents of Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, cannot drink or bathe in the water that comes through their pipes — water for which they are still paying! Residents of Florida and South Carolina are recovering from Hurricane Ian’s destruction. While hurricane force winds did considerable damage, storm surge and rain water caused much more destruction. The Mountain West and Southwest United States are experiencing the worst drought in more than 1,000 years. What is a person to do when taking a bath is no longer possible?
In the Scriptures
Leprosy figure prominently in the Kings and Luke readings for this week. It’s not clear exactly what disease or diseases the Bible refers to as leprosy. Whatever it was it was a profoundly disfiguring, isolating condition. I spent a summer as a hospital chaplain and one of my services was dermatology. In the late 1980s if you were hospitalized with a dermatological disorder it was ghastly and isolating. I learned to wash my hands a lot and keep a safe distance from my patients. That said, they were easily the most interesting and engaging patients I visited all summer. They were always alert and they had very few visitors. Having a friendly visitor who didn’t treat them like a leper (see what I did there?) made their day.
Conventions regarding contact with lepers during the time the gospels took place compelled lepers to keep away from society and shout “Unclean!” lest they get too close to people who did not have leprosy. It made sense for them to find community with other lepers. In today’s passage from Luke’s gospel the group of lepers includes at least one Samaritan, the common status of leper brought unity across ethnic lines.
Luke 17:11-19
It’s not clear where this story takes place. The area between Galilee and Samaria is well north of Judea. The reader assumes that all the lepers are Jews who would have headed to Jerusalem to show themselves to the priests and thus be restored to the community. It’s hardly surprising that one of them is a Samaritan; Samaria is much closer to where this story took place. It’s also hardly surprising that the Samaritan would go a different direction to show himself to his priest on Mount Gerizim. The point of the story, in keeping with Luke’s desire to include everyone in Christ’s realm, is that this member of the distrusted, foreign group is the one who turned around and thanked and praised God.
In the News
Water, water everywhere…and nowhere.
Water is in the news in two very different senses, separated by a continent.
On the East Coast recovery from Hurricane Ian has begun. Ian made initial landfall on the Gulf side of Florida on Wednesday, September 28. After weakening over Florida it gained strength over the warm waters of the Atlantic and made a second landfall in South Carolina on Friday, September 30.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Cuba lost power before Ian reached the United States’ mainland.
While there has been some loss of life in Ian’s wake, it could have been so much worse. The predictions for the storm’s track were mostly accurate and Floridians, for the most part, heeded the governor’s warnings to get to inland places where storm surge would not be a threat.
While meteorologists do not contend that Hurricane Ian was caused by global warming, there is clear evidence that global warming is disrupting weather patterns and making extreme weather events more frequent. Warmer water in the Gulf of Mexico adds energy to storms. Warmer air holds more water vapor thus causing more frequent flash flooding everywhere.
A different kind of water problem emerged in Jackson, Mississippi in late August following a major flood of the Pearl River. Flood waters from intense storms inundated the water treatment infrastructure leaving around 150,000 residents without clean drinking water. Water quality had been spotty in Jackson prior to the flood. A combination of neglected infrastructure, largely caused by changing demographics, prevented Jackson from being able to respond to the crisis.
Then there’s the drought affecting an enormous part of the Mountain West and Southwest. Climatologists are calling it a megadrought. The period between 2000 and 2022 is the driest such span since 800 CE. While climate change has altered rain patterns, a contributing factor is higher temperatures, which increase evaporation.
The drought is having major impact on agriculture, which consumes more water than any other user in the region.
I just moved to the Reno metro area. It’s fascinating to hear the residents talk about water. While they know it is essential to life and irreplaceable they continue to water their lawns morning and evening. A resident of Las Vegas, which is facing a much more dire water shortage glibly told me, “It’s not a water problem; it’s a distribution problem.” 2 million people living in a desert, during the worst drought in more than 1,000 years seems like a water supply problem to this outsider.
In the Sermon
Water is essential for life. We need water to live, but also to wash with. Water is essential for Christians because of baptism. Water is also a force of destruction and a symbol of chaos in the Bible.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Order says this about water:
The water of Baptism is linked with the waters of creation, the flood, and the exodus... [B]aptism is a sign of God’s gracious covenant with the Church. In this new covenant of grace God washes us clean and makes us holy and whole. Baptism also represents God’s call to justice and righteousness, rolling down like a mighty stream, and the river of the water of life that flows from God’s throne. (Book of Order W-3.0402)
In seminary my Baptism and Eucharist professor made it clear that the water used for a baptism should recall the peril of drowning. After all, one is baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. Rising up symbolically from the waters of baptism is a kind of resurrection, following the drowning of the old self. I knew I had nailed this when, following the baptism of my nephew, his grandfather said to me, “I thought you were going to drown the little guy!”
“That’s exactly what I did, symbolically. I’m glad you recognized that.”
The Book of Order states that baptism requires “visible and generous use of water” “The water used for Baptism should be from a local source, and may be applied with the hand, by pouring, or through immersion.” (Book of Order W-3.0407)
At a church I served early in my career there was a dear lady who had brought some water home from the Jordan River. She gave me a vial of it to use for my son’s baptism. It was nowhere near enough to be visible and generous. I added about a gallon of water from the tap. She was shocked, imagining The Miracle of the Multiplication of the Water until I told her I’d mixed her Jordan River water with that from the Loch Raven Reservoir. Twenty-five years later it seems an unimaginably extravagant use of water.
Naaman was reluctant to wash himself in the Jordan. What could possibly be special about its water? Surely the water of Damascus, his region, was superior.
How would this story play out in Jackson, Mississippi, today? Is water that isn’t potable safe for cleansing. Would you baptize an infant in water that you wouldn’t drink?
Water is essential for life. Water is life. Water from the Jordan destroyed Naaman’s leprosy, restored him to society and led him to faith in the Living God.
Water from Hurricane Ian and the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean are causing widespread destruction in the southeast portion of the United States. The absence of water is threatening the viability of communities across the southwest portion of the United States. What role do Christians have in ensuring that everyone has safe, affordable water?
Water can destroy. Without water humanity is destroyed.
SECOND THOUGHTSShawshank Babylon
by Dean Feldmeyer
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” Most of us remember that line from the movie, “The Shawshank Redemption,” rather than from one of King’s more obscure novellas.
Andy, a mild-mannered banker, is in Shawshank prison, riding a life sentence for a double murder he didn’t commit. He has every right to feel bitter and angry, and filled with despair but, somehow, he’s managed to avoid those feelings. He’s sitting in the prison yard with Red, an old con who has spent most of his adult life in the joint and has pretty much given up on himself and life in general.
Andy is sharing his dream of getting out one day and going to live in a little village on the beach in Mexico, but Red has given up on dreams. He has become institutionalized, he says. He isn’t even sure he would know how to survive on the outside. He thinks Andy’s dreams are just a distraction when all of his resources should be focused not on dreaming but on surviving on the inside. He, Red, has given up dreaming.
Andy responds that his dreams are what keep him alive, then he delivers that famous line. “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.”
I can’t prove it, but I think he stole that line, the message, if not the exact words, from the prophet Jeremiah.
In the Scripture
The children of Israel aren’t sitting in the prison yard. They’re sitting down by the confluence of the Tigress and Euphrates Rivers, the rivers of Babylon. They have gone there to weep and remember the days when they lived in the Holy City, Jerusalem, high on Mt. Zion.
“By the rivers of Babylon,” says the psalmist in Psalm 137, which we read last week. “There we lay down, and there we wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?”
They have been through a horrible experience. Their holy city and temple have been destroyed. They have been forced to stand and witness the murders of the king’s children after which the king, himself was blinded and taken away in chains.
Then they were forced to walk back to Babylon, some 500 miles, where they now live in the state of Chaldea near the location mentioned in the psalm.
They are allowed to live as they like and worship as they like. The only thing they aren’t allowed to do is leave and go home. Their new home, like it or not, is Babylon.
So, reluctantly, they find jobs and manage to scratch out a living but when the work is done, they assemble down at the riverside and weep over their losses.
One can easily understand the motivations of a few false prophets who tried to cheer the people up by promising them that their stay in Babylon would be brief. That God would not let the Holy People be forced to reside in such a fowl and pagan place. But this word does not cheer them at all. It makes them long even more for their home.
Word of this makes its way back to the prophet, Jeremiah, who is living in what remains of Judah, and he pens a letter to the exiles.
Thus saith the Lord…Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:5-7)
In other words: It’s going to be a long stay, so “…it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” Living is the better choice. Get a good job. Start a business. Find a nice guy or girl, get married, have children and (just to show he’s serious about the how long the exile is going to last) and raise them and marry them off to proper mates.
And finally, and this has got to sting. “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray…on its behalf.”
That’s right. Work not just for yourselves but for the city, the vile and pagan city of Babylon that you loath. Pray for it, too. Because you’re not going to prosper unless it does.
So, stop whining. There’s work to be done. Get up from the river bank. Get busy. Go to work.
Get busy living or get busy dying says Jeremiah. If you’re not doing one, you’re doing the other. And I strongly suggest the former.
In the News
What is your Shawshank? What is your Babylon? What is the worry that threatens to imprison you, that keeps you up at night and, when you’ve finally managed to sleep, waits in the dark and confronts you when you first open your eyes in the morning?
Vladimir Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if NATO interferes beyond a tipping point that he refuses to define. Those of us who are of a certain age remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and how we did drills in school where we were told to hide under our desks and cover our eyes and ears in case of a nuclear attack. And, being children, most of us believed that those things would save us.
Some of us thought it was silly and laughed it off. Some of us were terrified. Some of us had nightmares about flashes of light in the southern sky.
How worried should we be about Putin’s threat? Most experts reply with something like, “Worried but not too worried.” I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make me feel any safer.
I am writing these words on October 1, the fifth anniversary of the Las Vegas mass shooting that left 58 people dead and over 800 injured. Since then, this country has seen more than 2,403 mass shootings with 2,495 dead and 10,225 injured. And our political leaders seem either unable or unwilling to do anything to protect us from these massacres.
And while we’re thinking about that our friends and families are being beaten into submission by Hurricane Ian, first in Florida, then in South Carolina. Homes destroyed by wind and flood. Thousands homeless. More than 20 dead, so far. Schools, churches, houses, stores, government buildings, all gone.
Last week, one of my friends lost everything he and his wife own in that hurricane. His voice, when I talked to him, was thick with sadness and despair.
The next day, I talked to another friend, just a year older than me, and he told me, his voice cracking, that he has been diagnosed with early onset dementia.
Another friend called — this is all in the same week, remember — and shared with me that his 41-year-old daughter is an alcoholic and her drinking is destroying her life — her marriage, her career, her relationships with family and friends — and he doesn’t know what he can do, if anything, to help her.
Every one of these, my friends and those I have only read and heard about, is suffering in their own private Shawshank, their own private Babylon, imprisoned by sadness and worry. And most of us have been there with them if just from reading the morning news. It would be so easy for us to sit down by the river and just give up on ourselves and our lives.
But, we don’t, because…
In the Sermon
We are people of faith.
We do not place our trust in princes or politicians. We do not sit and weep while we hope for someone to come and rescue us from our distresses. We don’t throw our hands in the air and sigh and shake our heads at the sad and sorry state of the country and the world. We don’t waste time looking for someone to blame. We don’t frown and ask and them direct our attention away from the suffering of our brothers and sisters.
We fall to our knees and turn to the Lord in prayer. We ask God, “What would you have us do? What do you require of us, O God?”
And, if we are listening carefully, we will hear the voice of Jeremiah telling us to get up and start living our lives, such as they are. Rebuild your house, he will say. Hold that wedding you planned in a tent. Cook your meals over a wood fire if you must. Write to your congressional representative, your senator, your school board.
Hug your spouse, kiss your children and your grandchildren and live each moment of the life you have left.
Because, basically, it comes down to a simple choice, really: Get busy living or get busy dying.
And what God wants for us, is life.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:Psalm 66:1-12
Our God Is An Awesomely (Complicated) God
“Awesome God,” the bouncy praise song synonymous with contemporary worship services in the 1990s, echoes the resplendent praise of God running throughout the stanzas of Psalm 66. The 1989 song topped the Christian music charts and quickly became a staple of praise bands. But while the song, now included in at least 16 hymnals, may feel repetitiously trite, the faith of its author was more complicated — and even controversial.
“Awesome God,” written by singer/songwriter Rich Mullins, helped propel contemporary Christian music into the commercial success. Mullins, who died in a car accident twenty-five years ago last month, had a complex faith that challenged much of the evangelical world he inhabited.
Singer Amy Grant has suggested that Mullins was “the uneasy conscience of Christian music.” In an opinion piece in last Sunday’s New York Times, writer Tish Harrison Warren examined Mullins’ complicated life and faith, noting that his defies easy explanations or unexamined assumptions.
Warren’s essay describes the “unflinchingly honest” way Mullins balanced struggles and temptations with an unflinching faith in ways that make him stand out from other Christian artists. “Yet these struggles did not lead him to abandon his faith,” Warren writes. “If anything, they seemed to make Jesus grow more luminous to him.” He was often described as “authentic” and “raw,” who was critical of the prevailing “insularity of evangelical leaders at the time.”
Mullins rejected elements of fame associated with success in the music business. Living a life of voluntary poverty, he instructed his accountants to donate the majority of his income. He challenged white, upper-middle class evangelicals to reckon with the injustices suffered by Native Americans. “Awesome God” notwithstanding, Warren notes that many of his songs were “honest and raw,” and devoid of sugar-coated devotion.
In 2014, one blogger wrote:
Rich Mullins was the Holden Caulfield of our faith: the one guy who refused to be phony. The one guy who refused to play the game. The one guy who questioned the status quo in a music industry often driven by image and sales. The one guy who made faith seem real rather than cliché to Gen-Xers hungry for something authentic.”
* * *
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Trusting the Jordan
The great Naaman is less than impressed with the solution Elisha offers to cure the general’s leprosy. Elisha refuses to put on a show to greet the general, and then tells the mighty military leader to take a bath in the puny waters of the Jordan. Compared to the great rivers of Damascus, the Jordan looks like a country creek. It’s one thing to lead a general to water, and quite another to get him to bathe. Clearly Naaman does not trust in Elisha or in God. Equally clear is the soldier’s dismissal of the Jordan in comparison to the waters back home.
Lack of trust is a recurring theme among those who experience wide-scale water crises. A new longitudinal study of those impacted by the Flint, Michigan, water crisis backs up anecdotal evidence that lack of trust in the water supply has long lasting impact. One in five Flint residents meet the criteria for depression, and one in four exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. The study also showed that a lack of trust in public health led to higher overall rates for depression, PTSD, and other comorbidities.
According to the Lown Institute, this study shows that the United States does not have a firm grasp on the connections between clean drinking water and mental health. The Institute recently said:
While no area is immune, these crises tend to pop up and persist in communities with less resources and display our significant equity issues in terms of infrastructure and support. Unless we address these inequities, unless we pour our resources into preserving the life-supporting systems like our water pipes and infrastructure, we’re going to continue to see these crises pop up in the coming years. And as this most recent study shows, the impact of failing to do so can last for years.
* * *
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Unsung heroes
While Naaman and Elisha grab the commanding roles in this story, it is the servant of Naaman’s wife who deserves much of the credit. Unnamed, and only heard in passing, the servant speaks to power from her position of powerlessness. She exhibits what Pope Francis recently called “the strength of the humble.”
The pope was speaking in the central Italian city of L’Aquila the day after he had elevated twenty new cardinals, including many from isolated areas around the world. One, Anthony Poola, is the church’s first Dalit (“untouchable”) cardinal.
“There exists no other way to accomplish God’s will than to take on the strength of the humble,” Francis said. Humility, he said, recognizes the divine source of true power rather than basing our worth on a position or special status.
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:Luke 17:11-19
Gratitude
The leper who is healed by Jesus, and who comes back praising God, knows something important. Brother David Steindl-Rast says that our gratitude comes in two phases, and so, he says, “we really need different terms for our experience.” First, we have “the moments in which this gratitude wells up in our hearts…as if something were filling up within us, filling with joy, really, but not yet articulate. And then it comes to a point where the heart overflows, and we sing, and we thank somebody.” That’s “thanksgiving.” He says, “the two of them are two aspects, or two phases, actually, of the process that is gratitude.”
No doubt all of the lepers who are healed experience the first feeling. The one who comes back to Jesus gets both steps.
Brother David Steindl-Rast adds that is like a “vessel that is still inarticulate until it overflows… It’s like the bowl of a fountain when it fills up, and it’s very quiet and still. And then when it overflows, it starts to make noise, and it sparkles, and it ripples down. And that is really when the joy comes to itself, so to say; when it is articulate.” The tenth leper is overflowing with his gratitude.
* * *
Luke 17:11-19
Finding Things to Praise
The newly healed man who returns to Jesus is giving thanks for the life-changing gift of his healing. He has found, in this moment, what writer and professor Ross Gay would call “delight.”
Ross Gay set out to find something each day that delighted him. He says he thought, “It’d be a neat thing to write essays every day for a year about something that delighted me…one of the things that surprised me was how quickly the study of delight made delight more evident. That was really quick.”
When we start looking for things to praise, we will find them, much like the newly healed former leper.
* * *
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Fear of the Water
Fear of the water is not unique to Naaman — and neither is doubt about the power of a miracle.
The story is told of a holy man, who lived in a remote place, and relied on a young woman to bring him food every day. She, however, often arrived later than the holy man wanted.
One day after he chewed her out for this, she explained why she was perpetually tardy. The woman explained that she had to walk a long way along a river’s bank before she could reach a bridge that would carry her to the river’s other side.
So the holy man suggested that she, instead of crossing the bridge, walk across the water. That would save her time and perhaps keep her from being late every day.
From then on, she was never late. That, however, piqued the holy man’s curiosity. So he asked her how she now consistently managed to arrive so early. “Why, sir,” she answered, “I did as you told me. I walk across the waters of the river.” At this the holy man said, “This I must see. Let me go with you, child, as you return to the village. I believe I can surely walk on water, if someone like you can.”
When they reached the river, the woman boldly stepped into the water and walked to it other side. When she turned to watch the holy man, he hiked up his robe and stepped into the river.
However, after the man took a few hesitant steps he began to sink. So, the woman ran back across the waters to help him to shore. “What happened?” the shaken holy man asked her. “Well, sir,” she answered,“ you said you believed you could walk across the waters, but you gathered up your robes so as not to get the hem wet.”
Belief is powerful, for Naaman and all of us.
(Story by Linda Hutton, found at The Center for Excellence in Preaching.)
* * *
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Believing You Can
The young girl known in her early years as simply “Estelle” was raised by a single, widowed mother who worked domestic jobs to make ends meet. “Painfully shy and introverted from a young age, Estelle became an easy target for bullying at school, which led her to believe she was “ugly and stupid, clumsy, socially hopeless.” Her shyness combined with mild dyslexia made schoolwork difficult.
“Her teachers at Garfield Elementary School evaluated her earliest writing harshly, with comments like “Hyperbolic” and “You’re not even trying” scribbled in the margins. An elementary school teacher once asked, “Why include the science fiction touch? I think the story would be more universal if you kept to the human, earthly touch.” The teacher reported to her mother that, “She has the understanding, but doesn’t apply it. She needs to learn self-discipline.”
When she was twelve years old, Estelle watched the 1954 film Devil Girl From Mars, a sensationalist B movie that was so terrible it convinced Estelle that she could write something better. She recalls, “Until I began writing my own stories, I never found quite what I was looking for… In desperation, I made up my own.” As the possibility of becoming a professional writer slowly dawned on her, Estelle began her transformation into “Octavia,” whom she thought of as her powerful, assertive alter ego.”
We know Estelle as the best-selling science fiction writer, and one of the founders of Afrofuturism, Octavia Butler. Butler said, “The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was my own fear and self-doubt — fear that maybe my work really wasn’t good." Belief can hold us back, or move us forward, as it did for Butler and for Naaman.
(From Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte.)
* * *
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Rich in Time
“It’s going to be a minute,” God tells the exiles. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God tells the people to settle in to life in Babylon, not just for a few years. Get married, build lives, make your home here. God is giving them a wealth of time to imagine the future.
Futurist Jane McGonigal says that when we have an expansive time horizon like God gives the people in exile, it opens the mind to imagine more about the future. Being rich in time is a resource. She says, “I like to think of a ten-year timeline as a kind of cathedral or Grand Canyon for the mind. It lifts the ceiling on our imagination. When we feel time-poor, on the other hand, it’s like being stuck in a tiny, depressing room with no windows. We shrink ourselves and imagine less. We adopt “minimal” goals, which means we try to do just enough to avoid a bad outcome.” With a longer time horizon, we can dream bigger things for the future. This is the gift that God is giving to the people in exile.
(From Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal.)
* * * * * *
From team member Katy Stenta:2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Have you taken a bath?
When I’m really depressed, the last thing I want to do is take a bath. It feels like too much work to get clean — even though I know I will feel better afterward. As one of my colleagues noted, a common piece of advice for depression is, “Have you taken a shower?” It seems so simple, and yet it’s so hard. The energy to do self-care can be monumental. And yet, once I take that shower or bath, I feel about a million times better. My youngest sister was going through a particularly hard mental crisis, so I sent her all the things you need to for cleansing: soaps, hair care, brushes, toothpaste, etc. I wrote a note that said sometimes the block for self-care for me is that I keep forgetting to run to the store to get the one item I need to get the care done, so I sent you all the essentials to hopefully make that step easier. I wonder if Naaman was depressed on top of being ill and really needed to take that bath to get things moving. I wonder if that’s why God was like, take a bath and then we will talk.
* * *
Psalm 66:1-12
Praise the God of Responsibilities?
We are not raising children we are raising adults, my parents liked to say. Our suburban white neighbors in the Northeast were often scandalized by what it was my parents entrusted us with while we were growing up. We babysat from the age of ten, walked home in the dark, rode the train into the city by age 12, cooked on the stove and oven from an early age. Whatever helicopter parents are, after having spent three years in rural Arkansas, my family was not one of them. We learned to let go of worrying about feeling safe and put more stock in building responsibilities in ourselves. This is how Psalm 66 works. God is so great that God not only frees the Hebrews, but also entrusts them with burdens and gives them land. God is not raising servants, but a freed people. How great is our God?!
* * *
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Less Talk More Action
My teenager is the master of pulling you into an argument. I would love to say this is a skill they recently developed, but alas! No, all their life they have been skilled at sucking you into the definitions, so that you are so caught up in the details of the what’s and wherefores of who is right that you are in danger of never getting anything done. On my best days, I stop arguing. I nod along with whatever my eldest is saying, and then simply start onto the activity that needs to happen, with or without agreement. Because that action speaks more loudly than words. If I stop arguing, then my eldest complies. If only I could remember this more often… Timothy knew!
* * * * * *
WORSHIPby Katy Stenta
Call to Worship
One: Make a joyful noise to God all the earth
All: Come let us sing the glory of God, Let us give glorious praise
One: Say to God, How awesome are your deeds?
All: All the earth worships you, they sing praises to your name
One: Come, let us see what God has done
All: Come let us see God’s deeds among mortals
Or
One: God we long for healing
All: Help us to remember our Baptism
One: God we long for holiness
All: Remind us to love our neighbor
One: God we long for you
All: Remind us you are already here, Come let us praise our present God
Call to Confession
One: God cleanses us as many times as necessary, all we need to do is ask. Come let us confess ourselves to God.
Confession
All: God we confess that we are often like Naaman, reluctant to seek cleansing or healing. Or perhaps it is that we prefer special treatment. How hard is it for us to accept our baptismal status as beloved children of God? How hard is it for us to practice and enact grace and forgiveness? Teach us pray. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
One: God’s love never ceases, and God’s mercies never come to an end. Therefore we know that we are assured the good news, let us proclaim it to one another
All: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.
Prayer of the Day/Dedication
All: God renew us in you. Help us to center ourselves in you no matter how many bathings, healings and walks to the River it takes. Help us to identify ourselves not by the healings that are needed, but instead in the fact that we are beloved children of God. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Prayer of the People
God we long for you and your presence.
We know so many who are hurting and needing you,
Let us lift up those in need of special care at this time.
(Names and concerns can be added…)
God we also lift our voices in praise
For how awesome your deeds are,
We have joys to add to the list, and we lift them together here.
(Joys can be added here.)
God, we pray that you will bring healing and wholeness to the entire earth.
We give thanks for all that you are — and all that you are calling us to be.
We pray that you continue to call us to your kin(g)dom using the prayer your son taught us saying…
The Lord’s Prayer
Hymns and Songs
I went Down to the River to Pray
(extra not in hymnals)
There is a Balm in Gilead
UMH: 375
H82: 676
PH: 394
AAHH: 524
NNBH: 489
NCH: 553
CH: 501
ELW: 614
W&P: 631
AMEC: 425
This Is a Day of New Beginnings
UMH: 383
NCH: 417
CH: 518
W&P: 355:
I’ve Got Peace Like a River
AAHH: 492
BH: 418
CH: 530
PH: 368
O Christ the Healer
CH: 503
ELW: 610
Renew: 191
PH: 380
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
UMH: 400
H82: 686
PH: 356
AAHH: 175
NNBH: 166
NCH: 459
CH: 16
LBW: 499
ELW: 807
W&P: 68
AMEC: 77
STLT: 126
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
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMONThe Importance of Being Kind
by Quantisha Mason-Doll
Luke 17:11-19
Themes:
• Children as our tangible future.
• Being kind even when it is not easy
What does it mean to be kind? (Open the space to give examples of what it means to be kind.) Has there ever been a time in your lives where you found it hard to be kind to someone because they had been mean to you? Maybe you struggle with being kind to yourself after something really hard happens and you feel like you failed. Jesus shows us that we are all worthy of second chances.
Our story for today illustrates that sometimes it is hard to be kind after feeling hurt. The sick people Jesus heals made demands on Jesus. “Heal me — heal me!” But here is the catch — the people asking Jesus to heal them were outsiders of the community. They were seen as less good because of their cultural differences and their sickness. No one can blame them for demanding to be made better. It is not fun feeling sick or being seen as somehow different.
The moral of our story lies in the one person who noticed that they have been healed. They saw that Jesus offered them kindness without expecting anything in return, not even their thanks. Even though the larger group went ahead, the outcast (the Samaritan) took a moment to allow kindness to come first. This person realized the gift they had been given and the only thing they could offer in return was a thank you.
Prayer
Loving God help us to show kindness even when it is hard.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, October 9, 2022 issue.
Copyright 2022 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.
