Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-05-13
Wednesday May 13th 2020
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Dear Friends,
Wednesday Zoom Prayer Service TONIGHT, 7:00. Let’s pray together. Email info@firstpres.church if you do not have the link.
* * *
Many of you have read N.T. Wright’s biblical scholarship. He wrote a column that I’m borrowing today. I quoted much of it in my last sermon. His point, not to unfairly summarize, is that it’s necessary to lament. The Biblical precedent requires it. Our lament may not be as profound as somebody else’s, but it’s valid. And God laments with us.
Christianity Offers No Answers
About the Coronavirus.
It’s Not Supposed To
BY N.T. Wright
UPDATED: MARCH 29, 2020 N. T. Wright is the Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews, a Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University and the author of over 80 books, including The New Testament in Its World.
For many Christians, the coronavirus-induced limitations on life have arrived at the same time as Lent, the traditional season of doing without. But the sharp new regulations—no theater, school shutting, virtual house arrest for us over-70s—make a mockery of our little Lenten disciplines. Doing without whiskey, or chocolate, is child’s play compared with not seeing friends or grandchildren, or going to the pub, the library or church.
There is a reason we normally try to meet in the flesh. There is a reason solitary confinement is such a severe punishment. And this Lent has no fixed Easter to look forward to. We can’t tick off the days. This is a stillness, not of rest, but of poised, anxious sorrow.
No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation. But supposing it doesn’t? Supposing real human wisdom doesn’t mean being able to string together some dodgy speculations and say, “So that’s all right then?” What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot recognized in the early 1940s, when the only advice is to wait without hope, because we’d be hoping for the wrong thing?
Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world. It’s bad enough facing a pandemic in New York City or London. What about a crowded refugee camp on a Greek island? What about Gaza? Or South Sudan?
At this point the Psalms, the Bible’s own hymnbook, come back into their own, just when some churches seem to have given them up. “Be gracious to me, Lord,” prays the sixth Psalm, “for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.” “Why do you stand far off, O Lord?” asks the 10th Psalm plaintively. “Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble?” And so it goes on: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?” (Psalm 13). And, all the more terrifying because Jesus himself quoted it in his agony on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22).
Yes, these poems often come out into the light by the end, with a fresh sense of God’s presence and hope, not to explain the trouble but to provide reassurance within it. But sometimes they go the other way. Psalm 89 starts off by celebrating God’s goodness and promises, and then suddenly switches and declares that it’s all gone horribly wrong. And Psalm 88 starts in misery and ends in darkness: “You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness.” A word for our self-isolated times.
The point of lament, woven thus into the fabric of the biblical tradition, is not just that it’s an outlet for our frustration, sorrow, loneliness and sheer inability to understand what is happening or why. The mystery of the biblical story is that God also laments. Some Christians like to think of God as above all that, knowing everything, in charge of everything, calm and unaffected by the troubles in his world. That’s not the picture we get in the Bible.
God was grieved to his heart, Genesis declares, over the violent wickedness of his human creatures. He was devastated when his own bride, the people of Israel, turned away from him. And when God came back to his people in person—the story of Jesus is meaningless unless that’s what it’s about—he wept at the tomb of his friend. St. Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit “groaning” within us, as we ourselves groan within the pain of the whole creation. The ancient doctrine of the Trinity teaches us to recognize the One God in the tears of Jesus and the anguish of the Spirit.
It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead. As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope. New wisdom for our leaders? Now there’s a thought.
News:
Wednesday Vespers: Join your church friends and our growing internet community for a prayer Zoom prayer service at 7:00 tonight. I look forward to seeing you. Please join us. It’ll be good for us to unite.
Prayer concerns: (1) Carol Anne Hunter fell and broke an elbow in two places and her pelvis. She’s in the hospital, husband Dave reports. (2) Gloria Read will have cataract surgery tomorrow. (3) Let’s keep the saints at Rantoul Foods in our prayers. Some of our flock work there.
Debra Miller sends a song: This is a beaut from John Gorka. She sent this in response to Monday’s mailer. Lyrics below. Click this link to hear the song: https://www.youtube.com/
Humor (laughter is a gift from God): These old chestnuts are from Claudia Kirby: (1) The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday. (2) Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM . Please use the back door. (3) The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy. (My favorite recent joke is from the Petersons: What do you call a joke you make up in the shower? A clean joke!)
And this original from Dave Hunter: What do you call a pack of hungry dogs? The Salivation Army. (Look closely at the spelling.)
Good Word:
Job 38:4-11, 42:1-6 (Common English Version)
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Tell me if you know.
5 Who set its measurements? Surely you know.
Who stretched a measuring tape on it?
6 On what were its footings sunk;
who laid its cornerstone,
7 while the morning stars sang in unison
and all the divine beings shouted?
8 Who enclosed the Sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment,
the dense clouds its wrap,
10 when I imposed my limit for it,
put on a bar and doors
11 and said, “You may come this far, no farther;
here your proud waves stop”?
42 Job answered the Lord:
2 I know you can do anything;
no plan of yours can be opposed successfully.
3 You said, “Who is this darkening counsel without knowledge?”
I have indeed spoken about things I didn’t understand,
wonders beyond my comprehension.
4 You said, “Listen and I will speak;
I will question you and you will inform me.”
5 My ears had heard about you,
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore, I relent and find comfort
on dust and ashes.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we are weary and anxious. We are exhausted and overwhelmed. Our quarantine fatigue grows even though we want to do what is right for the sake of the most vulnerable among us. We wonder how long this season of social distancing will last.
While we are eager to be together, to get back to the routines and activities we once took for granted, we do not want to endanger any of your beloved children or risk an even higher death toll. Our sorrow over our losses persists despite our faith in your promise of a good future and abundant life. We lament missed milestones, jobs lost, loved ones sick, lives disrupted, resources stretched, essential workers heavily burdened and far too many people dead and buried without the rituals of grief that offer us comfort.
We pray, God of grace, for patience in the present moment. Give us the ability to abide in you when we feel as if we cannot abide this painful season one minute longer. We plead for wisdom. As leaders in every realm of our communal life face the complex decisions of when to ease our isolation and how to begin to return to work and school and travel and church, grant them discernment that takes into account the least of these, the priceless value of each person and our obligation to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Send your Spirit to witness to your truth, to remind us of all Jesus taught and to unite us inextricably to you and to each other. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
(Jill Duffield, editor of the Presbyterian Outlook.)
Much, much love to you all.
PEACE,
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
John Gorka – Ignorance And Privilege
INTRO: C
F
I was born to ignorance, yes, and lesser poverties
C
I was born to privilege that I did not see
Am
Lack of pigment in my skin, won a free and easy in
C G
I didn’t know it, but my way was paved
I grew up a Catholic boy, in a north-eastern State
C
A place when asked, “Where you from?”, some people tend to hesitate
Am
Reply a little bit late, as if maybe you didn’t rate
C G F
I was born to ignorance and privilege
My dad ran a printing press, a tag and label factory
C
May have seen it as a child, now a distant memory
Am
Almost too faint to see, dark red-brick factory
C G
I didn’t know it, but my way was paved
We moved from a city street, shortly after I arrived
C
To a house on a gravel road, where I learned to be alive
Am
Crawl, walk, run and ride, that’s where I learned to come alive
C G
I didn’t know it, but my way was paved
CHORUS:
F G C
If the wind is at your back
F G C
And you never turn around
F G C
You may never know the wind is there
Dm7 G
You may never hear the sound, no, no
C
Got to grow and go to school, work at home and dream at night
C
Even be a college fool, like I had any right
Am
Never went through a war, never Great Depression poor
C G
I didn’t know it, but my way was paved
BRIDGE:
Dm
Nose to the grindstone
G
Shoulder to the wheel
Dm
Back against the wall
G C
Maybe you know how it feels
INSTRUMENTAL: F C G Am
CHORUS:
F G C
If the wind is at your back
F G C
And you never turn around
F G C
You may never know the wind is there
Dm7 G
You may never hear the sound, no, no
C
I was born to ignorance, yes, and lesser poverties
C
I was born to privilege that I did not see
Am
Lack of pigment in my skin, won a free and easy in
C G
I didn’t know it, but my way was paved
F G
‘Cause I was born to ignorance and privilege
