Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-13
Wednesday, January 13th, 2020
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Friends,
Don’t forget our Wednesday night “Mission Trip” at 7 PM. For the link, email zoom@firstpres.church.
* * *
I know Christmas is over, but Don Hollis shared this with me last week and I didn’t read it in my email until this week. It’s beautiful. As we get busy with the “work of Christmas” may this encourage us.
From Don: Reading your post yesterday reminded me of recently coming across a German writer and poet from the mid-1800s named Friedrich Ruckert. In 1834, Ruckert wrote his own version of “O Tannenbaum [O Fir Tree].” In David Bannon’s “Wounded in Spirit—Advent Art and Meditations,” Bannon says of Ruckert:
“On Christmas Day, 1833, Friedrich Ruckert and his family decorated their tree. The next day Friedrich’s 3-year-old daughter fell ill with Scarlet fever and died a week later. Within days Ruckert’s 5-year-old son contracted Scarlet fever and, like his 3-year-old sister, died just days later.” After such a devastating loss just days following Christmas, the grieving Ruckert wrote his version of “O Tannenbaum,” calling it “O Christmas Tree”:
—–
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream.
how dark is your brilliance,
how broken is the dance that,
cut short, scattered your garland.
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream.
The candles on each
branch burned but halfway before,
mid-celebration, we snuffed them out.
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream.
The candies on each twig
are uneaten, untouched.
Ah, that you survived the ravages of revelry.
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream,
With your virgin fruit,
your unburnt candles,
stand until Christmas returns,
until their memorial day.
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream.
when we light you again, we need buy no angel:
our pair will be here,
celebrating with us.
I can only imagine what the 12 Days of Christmas might have been like the year Ruckert lost his 3 and 5-year old back to back.
Luise Ruckert — 25 June 1830 – 31 December 1833
Ernst Ruckert — 1 January 1829 – 16 January 1834
News
ESL Café Time
First Pres members are invited to join us for our monthly Zoom café time on January 14th at 10am. This would be a great time for you to get to know some of our students and tutors. If you’ve ever wondered what the ESL program is like, this is a great place to find out. We will be split into small groups so that we can discuss with each other. Bring your favorite hot drink and a snack to our Zoom Café Time.
We will have a Zoom Café Time every second Thursday of the month.
Email esl@firstpres.church for the link.
If you have any questions, please email the ESL Director, Jeanette Pyne, at jeanette@firstpres.church.
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Our nation is having a deep, contentious conversation right now. Here are some ways to deepen the conversation:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/
Humor (Hard times really need godly laughter):
Sports humor in anticipation of the Super Bowl…
Why do vampires love baseball? They like to play with bats.
Why couldn’t the strings ever win? They could only tie.
What did the team think about their stadium being covered? It was a dome idea.
(Help! I need jokes. Seriously!)
Good Word:
1 Corinthians 13 The Message (MSG)
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. 3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
LET US PRAY:
Oh Lord Christ,
Son of God who takest away the sins of the world:
Have mercy on us for we have sinned . . .
In a world filled with much faithlessness,
and lovelessness,
and vindictiveness,
forgive us, O Master of the Universe,
for joining the crowd.
* * *
Much, much love to you all.
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
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Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-12
ESL is doing great things, including a Zoom Café. Here’s the info and the link:
ESL Café Time
First Pres members are invited to join us for our monthly Zoom café time on January 14th at 10am. This would be a great time for you to get to know some of our students and tutors. If you’ve ever wondered what the ESL program is like, this is a great place to find out. We will be split into small groups so that we can discuss with each other. Bring your favorite hot drink and a snack to our Zoom Café Time.
We will have a Zoom Café Time every second Thursday of the month.
For the link, email esl@firstpres.church.
If you have any questions, please email the ESL Director, Jeanette Pyne, at jeanette@firstpres.church.
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Weekday Email to New Members and Friends – 2021-01-11
Monday, January 11th, 2021
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Friends,
Today I need to be reminded of what’s at the center of my life. The following affirmation of faith from our Book of Confessions directs my gaze towards the heart of the faith. This is a Trinitarian creed, and this shorted version focuses on the work of the Holy Spirit.
Affirmation of Faith/from A Brief Statement of Faith
In life and in death we belong to God.
Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit,
we trust in the one triune God, the Holy One of Israel,
whom alone we worship and serve.
We trust in God the Holy Spirit,
everywhere the giver and renewer of life.
The Spirit justifies us by grace through faith,
sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor,
and binds us together with all believers
in the one body of Christ, the Church.
The same Spirit
who inspired the prophets and apostles
rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture,
engages us through the Word proclaimed,
claims us in the waters of baptism,
feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation,
and calls women and men to all ministries of the Church.
In a broken and fearful world
the Spirit gives us courage
to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.
In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit,
we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks
and to live holy and joyful lives,
even as we watch for God’s new heaven and new earth,
praying, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
With believers in every time and place,
we rejoice that nothing in life or in death
can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
News
While it feels like much in our nation is turning upside down, your church has a week full of meetings and ordinary preparations. Marcia is on vacation this week. We have a special surprise for worship next week, and we’ll spend half a day Wednesday getting it ready, then half a day later in the week editing. Your Worship and Finance committees meet this week, as does the DREAAM Board and our SEA Groups. All of this is to say, please pray for your church as we keep on keeping on, to the Glory of God!
* * *
ESL is doing great things, including a Zoom Café. Here’s the info and the link:
ESL Café Time
First Pres members are invited to join us for our monthly Zoom café time on January 14th at 10am. This would be a great time for you to get to know some of our students and tutors. If you’ve ever wondered what the ESL program is like, this is a great place to find out. We will be split into small groups so that we can discuss with each other. Bring your favorite hot drink and a snack to our Zoom Café Time.
We will have a Zoom Café Time every second Thursday of the month. For the link, email esl@firstpres.church.
If you have any questions, please email the ESL Director, Jeanette Pyne, at jeanette@firstpres.church.
Humor (Hard times really need godly laughter):
What’s black and white and blue all over? A zebra in the freezer.
(HELP! With some jokes!)
Good Word:
I LOVE YOU, O LORD, MY STRENGTH.
2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
so I shall be saved from my enemies.
4 The cords of death encompassed me;
the torrents of perdition assailed me;
5 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears.
Let us pray:
Allen Huff shared this prayer with me last Wednesday night late. I needed it after the madness unleashed on and around the Capitol that day. Consider praying this slowly. It you have a moment to linger over this prayer, filling in its edges with your own words and silences, you might experience a blessing—as I did last week when I first prayed it.
Allen is a gifted minister, thoughtful song and story writer, and soulful friend.
Most Holy and Merciful God,
How do we even begin to pray right now? We can pray for our nation. We can pray for the families of those who died on Epiphany in Washington. We can pray for lawmakers, law enforcement, the military, and first responders. We can pray for our children, and their future. We can pray for enemies across the globe and across the aisle.
Yes, we can pray these things; and indeed, we do.
But Lord, if our prayers are words alone, they will do little more than clutter the air and numb our minds with lament, anxiety, fury, and sanctimony. And they will never be enough.
So, give human ears our prayers, O God. Help us to listen to those with whom we so passionately disagree. Help us to do more than to “agree to disagree,” for that is simply to quit listening, to write off others as not worth our time, our effort, our honesty and love. And we have so thoroughly written off ‘the other’ these days that contempt has become a norm. And contempt is a fatal deafness.
Give human eyes to our prayers, O God. Help us to see beyond appearances. Help us to search our hearts and the hearts of others the way the Magi searched the skies and trusted what they saw. Help us to see the signs of your presence in a hurting and hurtful world and in all the lives around us—black lives, brown lives, white lives, poor lives, sick lives, comfortable lives, young lives, old lives, grateful and gracious lives, terrified and angry lives. If we cannot see the holiness of the lives around us, we cannot see it in ourselves. And not to see You in ourselves and in others is a fatal blindness.
Give human hands and feet to our prayers, O God. Help us to unclench our fists and to reach out in humble service to those most wounded by our communal pride, and greed, and fear. And help us to serve. Help us to follow Jesus, to trust Jesus, to love him and to share him, to walk where he walks. This is hard, and for some of us almost impossible, for our culture, even our Christmas culture, tells us that we are entitled to material excess and to violence. But these are the enticements of the world’s selfish Caesars and brutal Herods who tempt us with shiny things, with mawkish platitudes, and promises of greatness and glory—things that must be held, carried, and protected with the hands and feet you have given us for lives of embodied prayer. To give into those temptations is to lose the reach of arm and hand, and the carriage of leg and foot. And such inaction is a fatal paralysis.
And Lord, give to our prayers the beating, fearless, human heart of Jesus who did not shy away from truth-telling, from challenging those who led the temple with self-serving piety, and from vexing those who led Jerusalem with resentment and intimidation. Saturate our hearts with your Christ that they may push his own life-giving breath, your Holy Spirit, through our arteries and veins that we may raise our voices for peace, for righteousness, for justice, and equality throughout the earth and throughout this Creation which is so shaken, troubled, holy, and good. For not to live courageously and not to speak prophetically is a fatal silence.
God, help us make our prayers more than words. Help us make our prayers our living, our doing, our seeing, our hearing, and our speaking. Help us to claim our Belovedness in Christ, and to acknowledge that same Belovedness in all that you have made. Turn us that we might follow Jesus as his humble disciples, as redeemed and redeeming servants, and as loving neighbors.
Lord in your mercy, do more than hear our prayer. Resurrect us into embodied prayers for ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our communities, our nation, your Church, and your world. Amen.
* * *
Much, much love to you all.
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
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Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-08
Friday, January 8th, 2021
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
* * *
The story of Epiphany inspires us.
A star reveals the light of God’s love in Jesus the Christ. Heavenly might is cradled in vulnerable love lying in a manger. Magi bearing gifts risk a dangerous trek across a foreboding dark dappled in star-light. Add imperial treachery in the form of Herod and his advisors, and we have a story for the ages.
We see sin and treachery in the pages of both ancient scripture and the morning news. On Wednesday we saw it when domestic terrorists swarmed our U.S. Capital while sympathetic on-lookers and the Herods of our own generation egged them on. We were terrified and sickened.
Our steady love of God and neighbor and a resolve to abide by the rule of law in the face of lawless mobs and baseless lies will, by the grace of God, heal our nation. We will reach across the fences that divide us. We will deepen friendships, work towards reconciliation with the ones we have too long called enemy, seek the stranger, break bread together, discover common ground, listen, make amends, grow, care about the other’s well-being, rebuild, laugh, mend. We will hold one another accountable.
Given God’s amazing love for us revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we have every reason to believe God’s grace will abound.
Treachery of every age will always lurk in shadows, but evil doesn’t have to rule the day if we dare to stand up to its terrible sneer in this hour of grave darkness.
During this Season of Epiphany, we ponder the Magi who made an uncertain passage across a perilous wilderness. By God’s grace, we can, too. And, of course, we must. Even in an age of pandemic, may we figuratively join hands as we set out.
May God help us.
* * *
Let’s pray together on this Sunday at 9:00, okay?
FirstPres.Live
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The Work of Christmas
by Howard Thurman
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
* * *
Let’s be the church
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
P E A C E ,
Matt Matthews
First Presbyterian Church Champaign
A (cool) congregation of the PC(USA)
Church: 217.356.7238; Cell: 864.386.9138
matt@firstpres.church
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Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-07
Thursday, January 7th, 2021
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
* * *
Dear Friends,
I promised these emails would return to the standard format to which you have become accustomed. Yesterday’s news was so upending I find that I can’t return to that normal today. Not yet.
I want to thank the 28-people in our flock who joined us in our Zoom service of prayer. We were honored to pray for many of you by name, and to pray for our nation.
* * *
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
God of ages,
in your sight nations rise and fall,
and pass through times of peril.
Now when our land is troubled,
be near to judge and save.
May leaders be led by your wisdom;
may they search your will and see it clearly.
If we have turned from your way,
help us to reverse our ways and repent.
Give us your light and your truth to guide us;
through Jesus Christ,
who is Lord of this world, and our Savior.
Amen.
—From the Book of Common Worship
* * *
Peace to you all.
Matt
864.386.9138
* * *
ESL Café Time
First Pres members are invited to join us for our monthly Zoom café time on January 14th at 10 AM. This would be a great time for you to get to know some of our students and tutors. If you’ve ever wondered what the ESL program is like, this is a great place to find out. We will be split into small groups so that we can discuss with each other. Bring your favorite hot drink and a snack to our Zoom Café Time.
We will have a Zoom Café Time every second Thursday of the month.
Email esl@firstpres.church for the link.
If you have any questions, please email the ESL Director, Jeanette Pyne, at jeanette@firstpres.church.
Read more...
Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-06
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
Epiphany
* * *
Dear Friends,
Merriam Webster defines “Epiphany” this way: capitalized : January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ.
Some say the days after Epiphany are “ordinary time” until the next calendar highlight, Ash Wednesday, which kicks off the Season of Lent leading to Easter. Others call the days after Epiphany the Season of Epiphany—the short season before Lent.
Epiphany reminds us to keep looking at Jesus who reveals to us God and God’s way. Wise men still pay attention to the night follow holy signs. And crowds still leave the city center to gather in the wilderness at the bidding of John the baptizer, watching Jesus himself come up from those waters with a heavenly crack in the skies. The star leads to Christ. John hollering at the water’s edge proclaims Jesus Messiah. And in Christ we see God. Epiphany.
The church calendar, to a large degree, hems in my life and work. The year is ramping up: a new year, a new life, a renewed walk. Epiphany.
Not incidentally for my immediate family, it is the very day my father died in 2002. Rachel and I were putting on our coats in Mom’s kitchen when the floor nurse at the VA Hospital called. Mom sunk to the floor saying, “O God, O God.” It was prayer, not blasphemous curse. Rachel and I, hearts pounding out of our chests, knew Dad was gone. Expectedly, suddenly, finally. Gone. His death, as did his life, bore witness to me of God’s steady love and providential care. I had my Dad (an a host of others) to show me the way of faith. The wise men had a star. So many epiphanies.
Thanks be to God for those people and events that reveal to us God’s godly things and abiding hope. The one born in a manger enlightens, heals, guides, reigns.
Join us TONIGHT at 7 pm for our Wednesday evening Zoom. We’ll pray our way into the Season of Epiphany.
* * *
Today is Epiphany. Happy Epiphany. Here’s an Epiphany story from my friend Jeff Kellam.
* * *
“Star Child”
by Jeff Kellam
They called seven-year-old Jesse the star child. That is, the people who lived in the homes near his in Bethlehem—they smiled as they saw him night after night look into the dark sky to watch the stars.
Jesse would spend the last few minutes before his bedtime gazing into the starry heavens, wondering why some stars seemed to shimmer, and why others didn’t. There were some nights, of course, that there were clouds that blanketed the heavens, and other nights that the moon was so full that the stars hid behind its light. And there were evenings when the smoke of cooking fires made it hard to see the gently sparkling dome overhead.
But if there were stars to see, Jesse would find them, and though he had long given up counting them, he had never stopped marveling at their splendor. His mother had warned him about getting a crook in his neck from always looking up before bedtime. Jesse’s father worried that his youngest son was more interested in stars than in other children, their games, their friendship. Jesse’s two older brothers and his sister had grown bored with making fun of him, and now pretty much ignored his nightly routine. They would come in from the fields where they helped their father shepherd the sheep herd of a well-to-do neighbor, and they were too tired to bother with their starry-eyed little brother.
One night as Jesse stood in the front doorway his mother wondered out loud if maybe Jesse’s neck might lock up one night and for the rest of his life he would have to walk around looking toward the sky. This was Jesse’s chance to ask again to sleep up on the roof. That way he could lie flat on his back and watch the stars until he fell asleep. And, he told his mother, his neck would straighten out nicely.
Most of the homes in Bethlehem had steps that led to their roofs. And most had a wall around the roof for safety, so that people who went up there to catch cool breezes during summer’s worst heat wouldn’t fall off. But Jesse’s house had such a low wall that his parents didn’t allow him up there alone. He might now be old enough to sleep up there by himself, his mother explained, but these nights are getting so cold…maybe in the springtime would be better.
But Jesse didn’t want to wait any longer. “I’m seven, I have a blanket, and I will be careful. The sky will be different in the spring. I want to see tonight’s stars,” he pleaded. Over the past several weeks, Jesse had noticed that there were stars clustering together, it seemed, joining their delicate sparkles into a bright beam that Jesse couldn’t stop staring at. An old man who lived two houses away had told Jesse one night that this was a sign of something about to happen, something very important.
When Jesse’s mother saw how badly he wanted to spend the night on the roof, she finally agreed, and Jesse rejoiced, dancing up the steps to the roof, to scout it out before dark. Jesse’s joy was short-lived however.
His oldest brother came home from the shepherd’s field early, and announced that he was sick. He gave his coat and shepherd’s crook to Jesse and told him he’d have to take his place that night. “But I get to sleep on the roof tonight, by myself, for the first time, and the stars are moving together!” His brother didn’t know what that meant, but said Jesse had no choice. They needed him to watch the sheep that night. Sheep are more important than stars, Jesse’s brother said.
But then he added that there was no better place to see stars than in the shepherd’s field. “Once the sheep are put in the gate, you can lie down in the grass and stay up all night as far as I care,” his sick brother said before going to his mat to rest.
Jesse’s eyes grew wide at the thought of that canopy of stars overhead. That would be better than being up on the roof. At twilight, Jesse grabbed his brother’s staff, a blanket, and a hunk of bread and he went out to join his father in the field.
The last of the sheep were being herded into the gate when Jesse arrived. There was always some commotion, baa-ing and bleating, wayward sheep to gather in, Jesse’s father giving instructions for the night, and then, finally, things began to settle down. It grew quieter, and Jesse, being the youngest, was allowed to wrap himself in his blanket and lie down to sleep.
But, of course, he didn’t sleep. He lay there looking into the night sky bright with dazzling stars. He knew where to look for the brightest ones, and they were of course in their places. Then he saw the brightest of the bright, the ones the old man had said were more than stars, but a shining sign of something special about to take place. Jesse lay there and wondered . . .
He had only wondered for a minute or two when his brother Jacob interrupted. “Jesse, wake up!”
“I’m not asleep,” Jesse said as he sat up.
“Father has heard something. We need to stay alert!”
“What did he hear? A wolf?” Jesse asked excitedly.
“We’re not sure,” his brother whispered.
They all heard it. It was no wild beast. It was more like the wind, but . . . musical. It was a sound like laughter, but not like any sound any of them had heard before. As it grew louder, it was like a song, like the temple’s music, but happier; like a wedding dance, but more beautiful, almost as if angels were singing in the sky. Jesse looked again into the heavens, found his brightest stars, and listened to the wind’s song. This was the perfect place to be, Jesse thought. “I never want to leave,” he said to himself.
But his father had other ideas. “Jesse, come on; we’re going into town.”
“Into town? Why? What about the stars? I mean, the sheep?”
“We’ve heard that a homeless couple has come to town, their baby being born in a shed behind a house not far from ours. I’m going with some others to see if they need help. Your brother will stay here in the fold, but I want you to come with me.”
“But why can’t I stay here,” Jesse whined. “I don’t want to see a baby; I want to sleep under the stars.”
“Your brother has enough to do watching the sheep. He can’t take care of you, too. So I will.
Come on now.”
His father’s tone was harsh and Jesse knew he had no choice.
He sulked as he walked, but since it was dark it did no good. His father and the other shepherds walked hurriedly into Bethlehem, down one village road and then another, speaking excitedly, and moving a little bit too fast for a boy up past his bedtime.
They edged their way through a small group of on-lookers, and there in a smelly shed where animals are sheltered at night, there was a baby in a feeding trough. His father spoke to the man whose wife had given birth, but Jesse went right to the infant, bright stars and laughing breezes and angelic songs momentarily forgotten. Jesse had seen babies before, but not this soon after birth. The little one was wrapped up tightly, and all that Jesse could see was the baby’s face. Tiny, wrinkled, red . . . little eyes closed in gentle sleep.
As Jesse watched, the baby opened his eyes.
“Look,” the child’s mother whispered, “he’s awake.”
Jesse looked into the child’s eyes and was startled by what he saw. There, in the clearest, brightest eyes he’d ever seen, was a star! Such a light in this baby’s eyes! Brighter than the brightest star in the sky. This was better than being on the roof. This was even better than lying in the field watching the twinkling heavens. Jesse couldn’t take his eyes off the star he saw in this child’s eyes.
Now, some folks would have said that it must have been the light of a near-by torch reflected in the baby’s eyes. Or the light that came from the cooking fire. But once Jesse saw a star, he remembered it, and he would never forget the shining eyes of that baby.
Because he discovered when he got home that there was a light in his mother’s eyes, too. He’d never noticed that before. When he looked into his father’s eyes, sure enough, there was a star. Even his brothers and his sister had a light in their eyes that Jesse had never noticed until the night he saw the light in the eyes of the new born child in Bethlehem.
And there was something else Jesse noticed. The stars in peoples’ eyes grew brighter when they laughed. From that night forever, light and joy danced in Jesse’s eyes and he always looked for that bright gleam in the eyes of people he met. If it wasn’t there, or bright enough, Jesse knew how to bring joy—and stars—to their eyes. (Jeff Kellam)
* * *
Happy Epiphany. As you look for God’s signs to guide your way, remember others look to you and follow your example.
Much love to you all.
PEACE,
Matt Matthews
P E A C E ,
Matt Matthews
First Presbyterian Church Champaign
A (cool) congregation of the PC(USA)
Church: 217.356.7238; Cell: 864.386.9138
matt@firstpres.church
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Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-05
 The Heart of Mission |
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Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-04
Monday, January 4, 2020
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
The Eleventh Day of Christmas . . .
* * *
Dear Friends,
On Thursday, this emailer will return to its regular format, but today and Wednesday (Epiphany Day) I’d like to go a little deeper and savor the Christmas Season. We’re still in it. At the check-out line in the grocery on January 2nd, all the merchandise on the shelves leading up to the cashiers was for Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t believe it. I refuse to rush Christmas.
My friend Allen Huff preached this great sermon on Christmas Eve. I share it with you to ponder.
Merry Christmas.
Still.
Matt
* * *
“Participants in the Kingdom”
Isaiah 42:1-9, Romans 8:18-25, Luke 2:1-20
Allen Huff/Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
Christmas Eve 2020
Isaiah prophesied to Hebrew exiles in Babylon. He shared a message of deliverance with Jews who had been displaced from Jerusalem for enough generations to be well past any kind of Stockholm syndrome. For many, Babylon had become home. However, if the very presence of prophets among the Hebrews says anything about their state of mind, they knew that they were not, nor would they ever be, Babylonians. They had been called into something far bigger than comfortable captivity in a wealthy, powerful, and even somewhat accommodating empire.
Through Isaiah, God says, Don’t acclimate to this! I am raising a servant who will be saturated with my spirit. He will work for justice. He will reestablish you, Israel, as God’s chosen sign of the covenant with the Creation. He will lead you out of captivity so that you help to bring light to the nations, to open blind eyes, and set captives free.
And God is working on this new thing right now, says Isaiah. Today.
And the people gaze toward Jerusalem, wondering, Who is this servant?
About 800 years later, Paul writes to Jewish Christians in Rome saying that while the present age is fraught with oppression and suffering, those things will not prevail. Indeed, such experiences are themselves the birth pangs of something new. The people, then, can live in hope because the same God who promised deliverance to Hebrews in Babylon is still at work creating and recreating, bringing the kind of light, justice, and freedom that the nations cannot deliver because they serve only themselves.
Isaiah and Paul penned messages of great promise and hope. They’re Christmas messages because through them God does more than utter words. God creates incarnate expressions of healing grace in and for a suffering Creation.
While this is wonderful news, there’s a fly in all this healing ointment. Neither Isaiah, nor the servant, nor Paul act alone. So, the people to whom they speak cannot sit back and merely watch what happens because God doesn’t call spectators. Seeing isn’t believing in God’s realm. God calls and equips participants who join in the faith-generating work of doing justice, showing compassion, and sharing joy.
In Luke, the angels’ announcement to shepherds was not for a superhero who had come to save the day singlehandedly. No, they announced the arrival of a messiah, a leader, one who would walk with the people as together they overcame the challenges and obstacles of disorienting oppression and injustice. And that messiah had arrived as a child, an infant, one who would need to be held and nursed. His diapers would need to be changed. Long before he would be immersed in John’s baptism, he would need to be immersed in the scriptures and rituals of his people. And as savior, his salvation would be about far more than individual transgressions.
In his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, an adult Jesus, fresh from his baptism and temptation, reads from the scroll of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” says Jesus, “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And when Jesus finishes reading that prophecy, he sits down and lets Isaiah’s words marinate in silence. Then he utters his own challenging and transforming words: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-21)
The child born this night is savior to a Creation in exile. And the salvation he brings liberates us from captivity to materialism, fear, and violence. Those foundational idolatries lead to all other transgressions. The “sins” from which we often claim deliverance through Jesus are merely symptoms of the deeper more destructive realities that enslave us. And our own culture is as materialistic, fear-driven, and violent as anything the ancients experienced. That’s precisely why faith matters, and why Christmas matters.
Jesus comes to do more than forgive our sins. As the Anointed One, he comes to lead us in the ways of faith, righteousness, justice, and peace. To me, Jesus seems far less interested in believers than he is in followers. His salvation comes not through dogma regurgitated but through love shared. And like Jesus, we inhabit God’s realm through our willing and determined participation in the kingdom of God. Here and now. Today.
We’ve all just experienced an extremely difficult year. We’ve endured a global pandemic, and even as vaccines are rolling out, some of the most difficult days still lie ahead. Like Rome, Covid is an occupying force. Like Babylon, it keeps us exiled from people and communities we love. But modern science, one of God’s shining stars, heralds good news, and it’s coming to us far more quickly than it would have just a decade ago. God is and has been at work through the minds of scientists and the hands of caregivers, as well as through the hearts of people who take precautions on behalf of their neighbors.
We’ve also experienced social and political upheaval this year. Across our country, we have recognized that the disease of racism still festers in our midst. Becoming aware of an institutional evil like racism is kind of like getting diagnosed with a life-threatening virus. And long before acceptance, parts of the body struggle with denial. And yet, throughout the generations, voices of grief have wailed, as the prophet Jeremiah says, like “Rachel…weeping for her children; [and] she refuses to be comforted…because they are no more.” (Jeremiah 31:15) Those were prophetic tears, tears which have been flowing for 400 years as prayers for deliverance, prayers for the very sort of kingdom-of-God justice that Isaiah promised.
All around us and within us, there are sufferings which may hold nothing when compared to “the glory about to be revealed,” but they’re sufferings nonetheless. Jesus, the Christ, comes to redeem that suffering by leading us in the ways of peace, justice, and love.
Friends, it’s Christmas, and the gift given to us in the child born in Bethlehem is the gift of freedom from exile, freedom from fear, freedom from greed and hopelessness. In Christ, God gives us one whom we may follow into lives and communities that are not only redeemed by grace, but that participate in God’s work of redemption in the Creation. Thus is this “good news of great joy for all people.”
Like Mary, let us treasure these words and ponder them in our hearts so that we nurture the new and renewing Christ Presence within us.
I give thanks to God for all of you. And I give thanks for the myriad ways in which you participate in God’s transforming work wherever you are, whoever you are.
Merry Christmas to you all, and Merry Christmas to others through you.
P E A C E ,
Matt Matthews
First Presbyterian Church Champaign
A (cool) congregation of the PC(USA)
Church: 217.356.7238; Cell: 864.386.9138
matt@firstpres.church
Read more thoughtful essays and sermons from Allen at:
https://jabbokinthefoothills.
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Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-01
Friday, January 1st, 2021
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
The Seventh Day of Christmas
(New Year’s Day . . ).
* * *
A Prayer for A New Year
Dear Reader,
If you are among the number who believe the New Year requires at least one bowl of black eyed peas and one formal prayer, this message is for you. Listen to that calling to pray, even if you aren’t a “pray-er.” Pray today. Begin this year with a prayer. With your prayer.
Here is a possible guide. It may work and help, or not. It may be too loosey-goosey, or feel too restrictive. The point is, offer to God a prayer on this first day of the year. Ready?
Use a prayer book, a psalm, a favorite hymn. Bruce Springsteen or Paul Simon can suggest lyrics to get you started. Stevie Wonder’s Songs In the Key of Life is a whole album of prayers. Let Leslie Odom be your high cantor, Aretha and Ella lead your chorus. Launch. Lift. Consider flight. However you begin, allow space for the words and prompts of others to become your very own words.
If you don’t have words, pause and don’t speak. Allow yourself to feel the freedom of being mute, quiet, decidedly not on the spot.
Don’t think.
Don’t worry.
Listen.
Be.
If you don’t have words for your prayer, consider that a gift. Relish it. Articulation is not limited to or bound by words. Sit up straight. Breathe deeply. Look up to the sky. A sun is behind those clouds.
Go outside and pause by the mailbox. Let the cold sting your face. Don’t hurry. Allow the chill to slip between your shoulder blades down your spine. Horripilate. (Look it up.) Feel the frozen grass underfoot. Listen to the woodpecker, peck, peck, pecking. Do you hear distant traffic? Wind in tree tops? Running water? Your belly growl.
Try on words like grace, thanks, wonder, awe. Say thanks more than once. You may wish to say those words out loud, but silence is fine.
Don’t let your neighbor or housemate know what you are doing. This is private. The moment you find yourself alone may be the moment you realize you are not alone. The Spirit may tip her hand, or not. Be still and be in a place where someone won’t ask you Are we out of eggs? or, Where did you put the tape?
Save your prayer lists for later, your list of woes, your list of wants, your list of friends, their cancers, their wayward children, those struggling with Covid. These lists are good, but allow yourself to pray through them, beyond them. Let your prayer begin deeply within you, but let it transcend you, me, mine. Lift up your concerns and celebrations. Let them slip between your fingers. Feel them leave your fingertips as you let them go.
You may wish to allow a scene from the Bible to enter into your brain. Allow yourself to walk into that scene. Still waters, green grass. A dusty road outside of Jericho. Magi with gifts. Shepherds with news. A garden. A mountaintop. A river’s water piled up on either side of a dry path. A manger. On an eagle’s wings. Moses conferring a blessing. Peter (or Amos) preaching a sermon. Jesus wiping a fevered brow. Daniel in a lion’s den. Ruth and a threshing floor. Ezekial in a valley of dry bones. Disciples on a boat. Whatever.
Is there a message for you there?
A question?
Don’t rush, and don’t take all day long because people need you. But, for now, pause. Cease. Wonder.
If you doze, fine. But if you sleep, allow yourself to dream. Take stock of those dreams, those fleeting images, being chased, falling, leaning into the firelight—pay attention, then let them go. Wake more deeply into centered prayer.
Thank.
Plead.
Listen.
Be.
Give up.
Give out.
Let go.
Receive, absorb, soak it in, welcome.
Be open.
Be still.
Be ready,
and go out to
serve.
A M E N
P E A C E ,
Matt Matthews
First Presbyterian Church Champaign
A (cool) congregation of the PC(USA)
Church: 217.356.7238; Cell: 864.386.9138
matt@firstpres.church
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Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-12-31
Thursday, December 31st, 2020
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
Some would say this is New Year’s Eve.
They would be correct. But it is also—
The Sixth Day of Christmas . . .
* * *
Pause and take stock of what you’ve lost in 2020.
But don’t allow yourself to get stuck there.
The losses may remind you, as they often do me, how deeply I have been blessed. This is an all-too-true story about how one of my blessings came to me through loss. Bittersweet, you may call it. I say sweet. May it guide you in your own reflections as this year passes to the next—on this, the sixth day of the Festival of Christmas.
We are blessed to be a blessing.
M.
* * *
Alice Pincus Zischkau died at 7:40 on the morning before Thanksgiving Day. She was born sometime the year before me and was a grade ahead of me in school. I was a Hampton High Crabber. She was a Knight at Peninsula Catholic.
I met Alice through her brother, Steve, and soon she and I were playing tennis at the courts at Armstrong Elementary. I walked her home down Chesapeake Avenue—the Boulevard as my father called it—and, though we never once dated, those evening strolls could not have been more romantic, moonlight slow-dancing on the dark waves of the Hampton Roads.
We played Scrabble. We talked. We laughed a lot.
Girls were a mystery to me. They confused me by just walking into the room. Alice brought this complexity to our brief adolescence, but, mainly, she was the girl next door who lived six long blocks away at the bottom of Robinson Park. She was my safe friend. We talked. She listened. I tried. We laughed. A lot.
When she went to the University of Dallas, we wrote sporadically. She often signed her letters, “Love and Prayers.” She meant that, I knew. What comfort those words brought me, to know that she loved me and occasionally dropped my name in her frequent conversations with the Almighty.
My wife and I attended her wedding. We were grad students at a protestant seminary studying to
become the pastors we are now. I hadn’t worshipped in a Roman Catholic Church before, but I never missed a week with my Presbyterian brood. It astonished me to read in their worship bulletin that non-Catholics were not allowed to the altar for the sacrament because we protestants and others were part of the broken church. We were encouraged to refrain from partaking and, instead, pray for the unity of the worldwide body of Christ. I was miffed and confused, too stung to pray, incredulous to be separated from my friend on such a special day by the sacrament we both held as central to our faith and life. Church unity has been important for me ever since, made poignant by this moment at Alice’s wedding.
Rachel and I were included in their joyous celebration in every other way, however, and we were so glad to be invited. The wedding crowd was large, as I recall, and an exuberant violinist moved through the crowd playing festive tunes during the sit-down dinner. I remember looking up to see if the moon that evening was blue. Alice had long-held that she only drank once in a blue moon, and every table in that large hall had lots of wine.
The wedding was in D.C. not Cana, but the miracles that day were no less astonishing. Joy gilded everything, moved through everybody, waltzed across glad faces. A dapper tux and lace wedding gown are not the daily uniform for a thirty-year marriage and for raising a family, but for Alice and Jon it seemed the perfect way to begin.
If our families shared Christmas cards during those years, I do not remember. Life got busy for us both. We reconnected several years ago when Steve told me about her breast cancer. I started reading and commenting on her Caring Bridge site. We exchanged some handwritten letters in these recent years. We had lived whole lifetimes since those teenaged games of Scrabble. It was good to be back in touch with my old friend. She was still the girl next door, if only half a country away.
Steve got in touch when the end was near, and texted a few hours later that the inevitable had come. Somehow, it seemed appropriate that she would die on the day before Thanksgiving, putting us all on red-alert that we should give thanks for both the tender mercies we’ve treasured and for those we may have forgotten to count. Alice is one of God’s many blessings that have made my life rich, and whole, and good.
On Thanksgiving Eve, my boys and I went for a late-night walk on the wide beach at low tide. Rachel and our grown sons had rented a house on Folly Island for the holiday. Waves nudged in piles of ocean foam, iridescent in the beam of my flashlight. We were warm in sweatshirts and shorts—a far cry from temperatures back in my new hometown in Illinois. The boys laughed, joked, and pushed each other around as we wove a path down the beach around curving lines of waves. The waxing moon pushed three quarters full and wasn’t at all blue, but bright, as were constellations of green stars floating over the ocean. The stuff of memory is like waves or light. We are never apart from those we love, from all creation, no matter the estrangement of space and time and loss.
Love and prayers. That’s how Alice might put it. It was her way not only of saying goodbye for now, but of leaning into the future, a credo, her way of affirming that we weave our way together, sometimes as near to each other as the other side of a tennis court and sometimes as seemingly far away as the other side of Jordan, but never alone. She wrote those words in her neat, cursive handwriting. Love and prayers.
So many prayers.
So much love.
P E A C E ,
Matt Matthews
First Presbyterian Church Champaign
A (cool) congregation of the PC(USA)
Church: 217.356.7238; Cell: 864.386.9138
matt@firstpres.church
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