Thursday, May 20^th 2021
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church, Champaign
 
Dear Friends,
 
            We grieve the shootout yesterday morning that left Champaign Police Officer Christopher Oberheim dead, another officer wounded, and a suspect involved, identified as Darion Marquise Lafayette, dead. We pray for all involved, all grieving families, and the Champaign Police family. O Lord, most high and kind God, hear our prayers and make us agents of your peace.
* * *
 
            Last night’s Wednesday Zoom was water on the moon with Janice Harrington regaling us with humor, poetry, and stories. Here are two more of her poems, and two others that sprung to mind when she read to us. 
 
ASH
Janice Harrington
 
Vernon, Alabama, 1961
 
I think about that winter in Vernon
when it was just the two of us and cold,
 
and December sifted snow over the red
dough boards of yard and roof,
 
and you made the terrible pilgrimage each night
in bare feet from bed to stove, to stoke its embers
 
and add the meager coal. Afterwards, you shivered
across the linoleum, across its worn and cinder-
 
bitten roses. Do I remember you leaping
from petal to petal, your sallow feet shining
 
like beacons? I don’t know. It was long
ago. But I know you climbed beneath
 
the sheets and “opening your shirt”
placed my hands against your belly.
 
We lay banked beside each other, unmoving,
asleep in a house as slanted as a cant of snow,
 
where we were Websta’s gal and her baby girl,
where we waited for the colored serviceman
 
who belonged to us, until waiting
was also winter, a weather we knew.
 
How lovely we were then, the two of us,
huddled in that darkness, surrounded
 
by the dull glowing of red roses
and comet-cinders, cast out and briefly bright.
 
* * *
 
REVIVAL
Janice Harrington
 
Through the cooling dark,
they walk, Lillian, Webster, Riley, Anna,
MacArthur and Eurel, returning
from Heavenly Father and Yes, Jesus!,
from paper fans with little brown
girls in Sunday bonnets “M-hmmmm”
from the communion of sour juice and crackers,
ah weh-lll, from church mothers in nurses’ uniforms and rills of sweat spilling from black brows.
Have mercy on us, Father.
Look down upon us, Father, and give us
your blessing, in Jesus’ name . . .
 
Above a darkened bough, a wing
beats, and in the pitchy shadows crickets
shrill, and a frog repeats, repeats,
repeats. Maybe Anna holds her father’s
hand. Maybe the boys tussle and pitch
stones into darkness while their mother
watches, humming and holding
her Bible more firmly than an ax handle,
or maybe they go weary on and quiet.
It is only their steps you hear, only shifting sand.
 
On a rural route, a family walks
while the night begins its long sermon, and the miles go by, and the miles go by.
If an owl calls from that darkness,
then someone will die. If a hound keens
one long, longing vowel, they will shudder.
If a star plummets, that too will have meaning.
This is faith, the road that takes them home.
 
* * *
 
Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden – 1913-1980
 
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
* * *

Grass

BY CARL SANDBURG
 
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
                                          I am the grass; I cover all.
 
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
                                          What place is this?
                                          Where are we now?
 
                                          I am the grass.
                                          Let me work.
 
* * *
 
Much love to you all.
 
Matt Matthews
matt@firstpres.church

* * *

Enough rain!  Sunday weather says partly cloudy with a high of 88 … a great day to join us for a Sunday in the Park at West Side Park at 11 am following the 10:15 am in-person worship.  See you Sunday!

Wednesday, May 19^th 2021
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church, Champaign
 
Dear Friends,
 
            Tonight at 7:00, our Wednesday Zoom will feature poet and children’s author—locally and internationally known—Janice Harrington. She’ll read some of her poetry, talk about the creative process, and answer our questions in a way that only a poet can begin to answer. Join us. Invite a friend.
 
            The Poetry Foundation says this about Janice: Poet and children’s author Janice N. Harrington grew up in Alabama and Nebraska, and both those settings figure largely in her writing. Her first book of poetry, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone (2007), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is also the author of The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home (2011) and Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin (2016). Her children’s books, The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County (2007) and Going North (2004), have won several awards and citations, including a listing among Time Magazine’s top 10 children’s books and the Ezra Jack Keats Award from the New York Public Library.
 
Harrington has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for emerging women writers. She has worked as a public librarian and now teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Illinois.

* * *
 
            Join the conversation tonight. The link follows at the end of this email. Invite a friend.
 
            Here’s a poem by Janice.
 
SHAKING THE GRASS

Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me
like red banty hens to catalpa limbs
and chicken-wired hutches, clucking, clucking,
and falling, at last, into their head-under-wing sleep.

I think about the field of grass I lay in once,
between Omaha and Lincoln.  It was summer, I think.
The air smelled green, and wands of windy green, a-sway,
a-sway, swayed over me.  I lay on green sod
like a prairie snake letting the sun warm me.

What does a girl think about alone
in a field of grass, beneath a sky as bright
as an Easter dress, beneath a green wind?

Maybe I have not shaken the grass.
All is vanity.

Maybe I never rose from that green field.
All is vanity.

Maybe I did no more than swallow deep, deep breaths
and spill them out into story:  all is vanity.

Maybe I listened to the wind sighing and shivered,
spinning, awhirl amidst the bluestem
and green lashes:  O my beloved!  O my beloved!

I lay in a field of grass once, and then went on.
Even the hollow that my body made is gone.
 
* * *
 
Much love to you all.
 
Matt Matthews
matt@firstpres.church

* * *

Enough rain!  Sunday weather says partly cloudy with a high of 88 … a great day to join us for a Sunday in the Park at West Side Park at 11 am following the 10:15 am in-person worship.  See you Sunday!

Monday, May 17^th 2021
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church, Champaign
 
Dear Friends,
 
            Our youngest graduated college two weeks ago, and me and Rachel and our other two sons gathered to celebrate. We all took a brief trip to Litchfield Beach afterwards and spent a week in a condo overlooking the ocean, cooking, walking on the beach hunting shells, and exploring the Brookgreen Gardens where I delighted in petting a friendly goat and watching an alligator sunbathe. We fit in a game of putt-putt and a few games of Scrabble, walked a labyrinth and miles of beach, and generally chatted, relaxed, read, and slept in.
 
            While we enjoyed one another, our hearts were heavy because every transition brings a certain amount of gravitas. John Mark said goodbye to some really good friends at school. One begins a job in Pittsburgh. Another accepted a fellowship in South Africa. Like runners in a race, they stretched young bodies, stepped to the start line, and awaited the gun to signal the start. But no one sprinted away from that line when the gun sounded. They hung back for a few last conversations. 
 
            And we all remembered Jeremy Chen. He graduated Riverside High School a year behind our Joseph and a year ahead of our Benjamin. All my boys knew and liked Jeremy. He was whip-smart, all-state clarinet, drum-major of the band, all-around nice guy, beloved by teachers and students alike. Jeremy got colon cancer last year in a California grad school, and died last week, a short year later. A friend, Hope, flew out to California to see him and reported that just three days before he died, he could still crack up a room. God bless him and all his grieving family and friends.
 
            Transitions are bittersweet. The old life slips away. The new life begins. Just like that. It’s really wonderful. And sometimes a little scary. And sometimes you’ve worked so hard, and run so long, you just aren’t ready for the next leg of the journey. But ready or not, it’s time. It’s time to leave this home for a new one. We are made for the journey. In John Mark’s case, it will be to Baltimore. He’ll spend two years with Teach for America there, and maybe some grad work at Johns Hopkins.* Jeremy heads for a more distant shore—even as our hearts are full, carrying his heart, as we do, in ours. 
 
            Emily Dickinson so grieved the death of her parents that she wrote, “Home is so far from Home.”
            
            Know the feeling?
 
            Rachel and I drove 889.5 miles on Friday. It was a long day behind the wheel. Traffic was light. Many gas stations were out of gas, but we found the ones that were able to fill our tank. We wanted to get home because, well, it was time. We made the drive in one marathon day because we wanted to wake up in our own bed, and get to the Saturday Farmer’s Market and bump into fresh vegetables and old friends. 
 
            Emil Cobb, The Button Guy at the market, made us a refrigerator magnet of a picture of our boys and us sitting on a sunny, windswept deck at Murrell’s Inlet waiting for an early dinner. We were all smiles on that sunny day. And Rachel and I smiled as we watched Emil make our magnets as we waited. He serviced the soda machines at the University before he retired. We’ve been stopping by his booth for four years, every Saturday. He’s like family, as is Phil Strang in the booth on the same row; his new painting is of a rabbit. It’s hard for Rachel to like rabbits; they eat all the leaves off her flowers and tomatoes, but they’re part of the family, too.
 
            Home includes these rabbits and Phil and Emil and you. Sometimes home is so far from home. 
 
            And sometimes home’s boundaries are so far flung it’s impossible ever to leave, no matter how far the journey takes you. 
 
            Thanks for sharing the journey with us.
 
Much love to you all.
 
Matt Matthews
 
 
* (Johns Hopkins’ brother (?), Ferdinand, sent money to the woman in Arkansas he read about in the Presbyterian Outlook who were picking cotton in order to raise funds to build a new sanctuary for the Presbyterian church in 1913. That was my first call out of seminary!)

Friday, May 14^th 2021
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
Here’s a Friday letter to you that I borrowed from Rev. Bill McLean, our Presbyter for Congregational Care of Southeastern Illinois Presbytery. It’s good food for thought.
 
I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.
 
* * *
 
This week a friend who serves a Presbyterian congregation in Indiana shared the story of a former member who had left the congregation and moved prior to the pandemic. Over the past year, this former member has reconnected with the congregation for a variety of pastoral and personal reasons.
 
While the person has not been physically with the congregation they have been supported through the connections and pastoral care provided virtually over the past year. This person now regularly participates in fellowship, learning and worship events from their home in another state.
 
It is a wonderful story, but the amazing thing is that this story is not unique to this one congregation. Similar stories are occurring in our presbytery and across the nation.
 
Individuals are connecting and reconnecting with congregations in new and meaningful ways. The excitement is not because someone is counted in a congregation’s ministry contacts for the past week, but because someone has been able to connect with God and God’s children in a new and meaningful way.
 
While the pandemic has meant changing how we interact with each other, it has not meant that we are not connected. It has just meant that we are connecting and reconnecting in alternative ways.
 
I am saying “alternative” intentionally because while the ways we are connecting may be new to us, they may be remarkably familiar to those of previous generations. While there are congregations who are worshipping virtually using technology platforms that I had never heard of, there are also congregations who are worshipping through pastoral letters like those used by the early church.
 
Scripture calls us to “O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” (Psalm 96:1 NRSV). Sometimes the new song is completely new, like when we experiment with virtual connections. And sometimes the new song is modifying existing ways, like visiting with family members through the two sides of a window instead of sitting together in the living room.
 
Both are approaches of lifting a new song because both are ways to connect in meaningful ways. Even as we begin returning to some in person activities it is vital that we do not leave behind those who have been able to connect because of the new song we have sung this past year. It is important that we remain connected with those who gather in person and those we connect with us remotely.
 
What alternative ways have you found to connect in meaningful ways during the pandemic? And how will you keep singing these new songs in the weeks and months ahead?
 
Grace and peace,

Rev. William “Bill” McLean, II
Presbyter for Congregational Care
Presbytery of Southeastern Illinois
 
* * *
 
 Much love to you all.
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
 
* * *

News:

From your Nurture Team — Naomi Rempe was the first to correctly identify last week’s photo of Ginny Waaler.  

Here’s this week’s photo. 

Visit http://fb.com/groups/firstpreschampaign to make your guesses, or email them to photos@firstpres.church.  
 
Please join in the fun!  We are running VERY LOW on photos, so we would like you to select a photo from your younger years (grade school, high school or early adulthood). Photos need not be professional. Candid shots are welcome. Please send your photos to photos@firstpres.church.
 
* * *
 
Some great covers of old songs/ Higher Ground:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAcVpaNZ6W4
  
A traveling (metaphysically) song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozd2ja7mAgM

Music transcends. Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw86MN39h60
 
 Again…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y
 
 

Thursday, May 13^th 2021
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois

Dear Friends,
 
Allen Huff and I have been in the same study group for nearly 30-years. He send me his sermon every Sunday afternoon. I read it and I wonder what on earth am I doing preaching? His sermons are so layered, thoughtful, and compelling, 
 
Enjoy this example:
 
* * *
 
         Most of us can relate to the image of pruning. Maybe not all of us have pruned grape vines, but many of us have some familiarity with pruning things like rose bushes, azaleas, or crepe myrtles. Or we’ve suckered tomato plants. Or we’ve at least weeded a garden.
 
It seems to me, too, that when reading and interpreting the image of the vine-grower pruning the vines, the tendency in the church has been to head straight for judgment. The idea that “sinners” are branches to be pruned and burned fans that smoldering ember of resentment within that part of us that wants to see bad people suffer.
 
Related to that, pruning can also be low-hanging fruit for lazy preachers who would rather scare worshipers into compliant behavior than take the risk of preaching and modeling real faith, hope, and love—that is to say practicing genuine discipleship, which, says Jesus, is what truly delights and glorifies God.
 
The detail that got my attention this week is Jesus saying that the vine-grower prunes even fruitful branches. He does that, says Jesus, “to make [them] bear more fruit.”
 
When I look back at sermons I wrote and preached 15-25 years ago, I’m amazed that people didn’t get up and leave. My early sermons so terribly, terribly long. And while much of what I wrote may have been poorly written, it wasn’t bad in principle. It just wasn’t helpful. It did precious little to help proclaim the gospel or glorify God.
 
Over the last ten years, I’ve adopted a less is more approach to sermon writing. Still, the first draft of every sermon always has way more words than necessary. After finishing a draft, I break out the pruning shears and lop and burn my way through the sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes I grieve the loss of certain things. Every word and turn of phrase meant something to me when I wrote it. But on the whole, those extra leaves and branches did little more than call attention to themselves.
 
It seems to me that that’s the kind of pruning the vine-grower does to make even the good branches produce more fruit. Even the best parts of us have extraneous stuff that can—and according to John 15, should—be pruned to allow the beauty of our God-imaged selves to shine.
 
If we step back and look at the broad sweep of Jesus’ ministry, we can see his words clipping away at the branches much like a vine-grower pruning his vines. One of the clearest examples appears in Matthew’s sermon on the mount when Jesus says (six times!) that his listeners have heard that the law says one thing (like exact and eye for an eye, or love your neighbor and hate your enemy), “but,” says Jesus, “I say to you” forgive as God forgives you, and love and pray for your enemies as well as your friends. (See Matthew 5) He doesn’t just turn the law upside down; he prunes it in order to allow all the branches to grow and become more vital.
 
While Jesus does get frustrated with and speak prophetically to those who continue to live selfishly, judgmentally, and violently, he nonetheless forgives and loves everyone whom he teaches. He claims them as branches.
 
“I am the vine, you are the branches,” he says. That opens the door to a thought-provoking inference. It is—in part, anyway—Jesus’ own body that he prunes. When he prunes, he does so not to cut off fingers or toes, not to get rid of certain individuals, but to give the whole body, all humanity, new opportunity to grow. In John 10:10, he says, “I came that [you] may have life, and have it abundantly.”
 
         To reiterate a point I’ve made before: Jesus comes not to prepare us to be dead, but to teach us how to be alive, here and now. And the abundant life to which he calls us involves letting go of, being pruned of, those attitudes and practices that limit our ability to love and to be loved by God, and to love and to be loved by one another.
 
         Later in John, when Jesus tries to wash Peter’s feet, the disciple refuses to accept that Jesus should stoop to the level of the lowest servant in a household. Both lovingly and firmly, Jesus prunes Peter of his short-sighted arrogance. “Unless I wash you,” says Jesus, “you have no share with me.”
 
            Jesus seems to know that if his followers think that Jesus is above servanthood, then they will assume that they, too, deserve deferential and preferential treatment. And any attitude or ideology that allows one person or group to assume superiority over another person or group runs counter to Jesus’ teaching about the last being first and the first being last. Being antithetical to Christ, those mindsets must be pruned from all who claim to be disciples of Jesus.
 
         Here’s the crux: Human beings are not pruned from the vine. Human sin is. Our idolatry is. Our selfishness, our prejudice, our pride, our greed, and our affinity for violence are all fruitless shoots to which the vine-grower takes his pruning shears. Being all about restoration and renewal, being all about Resurrection, Jesus wants to prune our spirits of those things because they keep us from living abundantly and loving unconditionally. 
 
     The other key image in today’s passage is that of abiding in Christ. When the pre-Friday Jesus says that when he is “lifted up from the earth, [he] will draw all people to [him]self,” (John 12:32) I hear him saying that to experience the post-Sunday Jesus, we must learn to let go of everything that prevents us from abiding in him. Otherwise, the idea of the crucified God will make no sense.
 
To abide in Christ is to draw our energy and our identity from the vine which is, as Paul says, “rooted and grounded in love.” (Ephesians 3:17) Think of the differences in hydrangea blossoms. Hydrangeas flower in blue, white, and pink. The difference is not the same as the difference between varieties of roses, whose blooms and aromas are genetically engineered. Hydrangea blooms get their color from the relative pH of the soil in which they abide. The more acidic the soil, the bluer the blossom. The more alkaline the soil, the pinker the blossom.
 
         The Christ Vine abides in love. So, when we abide in Christ, we, too, abide in love. Those parts of us that abide in anything other than Christlike love for God, for neighbor, and for the earth, pollute our words and actions with envy, resentment, and self-serving fear.
 
When we learn to abide in unsentimental, agape love, that love prunes us of fruitless attitudes and actions. Love becomes our way of life. We embody love, because we abide in Christ, who abides in God, who IS love. (1John 4:8)
 
* * *
 
Much love to you all.
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church

* * *

News:

First Pres members are invited to join us for our monthly Zoom Café Time TODAY 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.
 
Email esl@firstpres.church for the link.
If you have any questions, please email the ESL Director, Jeanette Pyne, at jeanette@firstpres.church. 

Wednesday, May 12^th 2021
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
My friend Kevin Murphey writes his congregation every day with reflections from scripture. He is one such reflection from last week.
 
* * *
 
For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us. 2^nd Thessalonians 2:3-8
 
Determined! That’s the word that comes to me when I see the look in [a seagull’s eyes over the beach]. She is determined to find her next morsel of food. They amaze me whenever I see them. It has to take a lot of determination for any animal to survive in the wild. Yet they do. 
 
When I think about the early church and those first very brave and determined apostles, I am truly amazed. Some of them where there with Jesus right from the start. They dropped whatever they were doing, literally dropped their nets, and followed Jesus as he taught and healed and spread the good news of God’s love throughout the countryside and in the villages of Galilee. They put their entire trust in this carpenter’s son from Nazareth without knowing where it would take them, who they would encounter and when or how it would end. Amazing!
 
When their travels took them to Jerusalem and they witnessed Jesus final encounter with the forces arrayed against him, they knew they were in trouble. Some deserted the mission, others hid out of fear. But God was determined to not let humiliation, pain and death have be the final answer. God was determined to get through to us. God raised Jesus from the dead and even when the disciples saw the empty tomb, they were still not yet convinced. It would take something more. It would take God sending the Holy Spirit among them to bring them peace and confidence and the determination needed to get the Word out. 
 
Then comes the apostle Paul. As Saul he was determined to snuff out this Jesus movement. It took a blinding encounter with the risen Christ to bring him around to the truth of the good news. Then, he took off like a rocket into the world with the gospel of Christ. Obviously, once he got to know the people he had ministered among, they became as dear to him as the gospel itself was.  So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.  That’s the way the Word gets out into the world. Caring so deeply for your friends and neighbors that you are determined to share the wonder of this great good news with them – this treasure you have found and cherish. 
 
O Christ you are a bright flame before me, 
you are a guiding star above me,
you are the light and love I see in other’s eyes.
Keep me, O Christ, in a love that is tender.
Keep me, O Christ, in a love that is true.
Keep me, O Christ, in a love that is strong,
today, tomorrow and always. Amen.
 
* * *
 
Much love to you all.
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church

* * *

News:

Please join our church’s zoom Mid-Week Gathering TONIGHT at 7 pm for Bob and Kristi Rice’s presentation of their work in South Sudan.
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.

* * *

First Pres members are invited to join us for our monthly Zoom Café Time on May 13^th 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. 
Email esl@firstpres.church for the link.
 
If you have any questions, please email the ESL Director, Jeanette Pyne, at jeanette@firstpres.church. 

Monday, May 10^th 2021
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
 
            Is First Presbyterian Church in a rut?
            
            I hope so.
 
            Not all ruts are bad. Consider athletes. The golfer works on her tee shot so that her body learns the stroke perfectly. She practices the shot a ton of times so that she creates a kind of muscle-memory—a rut for her swing—in order that she can hit the shot with ease. 
 
            Swimmers, quarterbacks, ice hockey wings, point-forwards—they all do it. All this practice makes it look easy out of the field. Singers and musicians do it, too. And cooks, and teachers, and preachers, and, well, you get the idea. 
 
            No all ruts are bad. We teach our kids certain routines that we want them to learn when it comes to healthy habits like brushing their teeth. There are certain things we learn by rote, so that it becomes more familiar and thereby more useful, things like dinner time prayers, and going to church on Sunday. We memorize passages of scripture (like Psalm 23) so that we can access them when we are in trouble and could use a ray of comfort. We practice giving money so that generosity becomes a natural pattern for us, a way of life that gets easier the longer we do it. 
 
            Some ruts are terrible, boring, plodding, deep, one foot in front of the other, misery. But not all ruts are bad.
 
            The 23^rd psalm talks about ruts. God leads me in “paths of righteousness,” in “right paths,” in ruts of righteousness.” God’s path, then, is like a rut in that it safely leads us always to a good place: 

•       from green pastures to still waters, 
•       from being empty to being restored, 
•       through the valley of the shadow of death to a table of bounty,
•       from travail to safety, 
•       from being lost to being home, 
•       from being alone to meaningful relationship—relationship with God and each other.

 
            I’m told that, before the days when the railroad connected the west coast with the east, the horse drawn wagons, those lumbering prairie schooners, would follow the wheel ruts of the pioneers who went before them. These were good ruts, because they led westward via the safest, surest path.
 
            So it is with God. There is divine protection along the way (a shepherd’s rod and staff). And, God’s rutted path leads to safety.
 
            God’s road isn’t always a scenic one. And it’s not always easy; there’s a real prairie schooner in the Museum of Science and Technology in Chicago. It may have been an amazing means of transportation technology a hundred years ago, but it looks anything but comfortable now. Sometimes the path is hard, dark, and scary. But God’s road is always the right road. 
 
* * *
After the naturalist John Muir left Cuba, he took inexpensive passage to California. He was astonished by the scenery. He wrote in a letter, “This valley of the San Joaquin is the floweriest piece of world I ever walked, one vast level . . . a sheet of flowers, a smooth sea.” He stopped and counted 7,260 flowers in one square yard. (1)
 
            The Lord . . . maketh me to lie down in green pastures: 
            he leadeth me beside the still waters.
            He restoreth my soul
 
* * *

            God has called First Pres on a journey. We have, because of God’s grace, worn a path to places like the Refugee Center, DREAAM House, and our ESL and Francophone family of friends. God’s ruts lead us to places like Kemmerer Village in Illinois, Sangla Hill Girls’ School in Pakistan, and the Iglesia Presbiteriano Reformada de Luyano of Havana.
 
            Our partnership with our sister church in Cuba was formalized in 2012. When they are here, or we are there, we gather to worship, to pray, to learn about and experience different cultures, and to celebrate the diversity of the body of Christ. It’s a good friendship, and it’s important that we build such friendships around the world.
            
            Los santos de Luyano han sido socios en la oración. Ellos son amigos. Son familia. Gracias. (The saints in Luyano have been partners in prayer. They are friends. They are family. Thank you.)
 
            Our friends in Cuba are in the dark valley right now. The pandemic has been particularly difficult for them, and the economy was already precarious. Without tourism, income has plummeted. The NY Times reports clean water problems and food shortages; in September, an unemployed tourism guide in Havana waited only two hours to get into the government-run supermarket. Usually, the waits can mean eight or 10 hours. For the first time in a long time they had toothpaste. (2)
 
            
            What is to blame? The revolution of 1959? The colonialism of the early twentieth century? Governmental mismanagement? The collapse of the Soviet Union. The failure of the Venezuelan economy? The US Embargo on Cuba? I’m not a political scientist or historian. I just know our friends are quietly suffering.
 
            Chicken, oil, rice, corn, and beans. There’s a shortage. (3) People wait in long lines and often leave with empty bags.
 
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
I will fear no evil: 
for thou art with me; 
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
 
            God’s ruts have led First Pres into a complicated, beautiful relationship with our sister congregation in Luyano. And these faithful saints remind us what faithful trust looks like:
 
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: 
thou anointest my head with oil; 
my cup runneth over.
 
            When we visit, they serve us hard-to-come-by eggs every morning. They save their coffee for us so we can drink it in abundance. We have so much to learn from our friends at Luyano about hospitality, about community, about generosity, about patience, about long-suffering, about family, about loving-kindness, about sacrifice.
 
            Thank God that God has led us in ruts of friendship that lead all the way across the ocean and back.
 
* * *
 
            Jesus, the Good Shepherd, walks with us. Jesus the good shepherd nudges us when we go astray, steadies us when the valley is dark, and celebrates with us when the valley is covered with too many flowers to count.
 
             Faith doesn’t give us the answers so much as it gives us the path. 
 
            Is First Pres in a rut? 
 
            I certainly hope so. 
            
            Alleluia!
 
AMEN
 
* * *
 
Much love to you all.
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
 
 

(1) The Writers’ Almanac, April 21, 2021.
(2) It was a lucky day for the unemployed tourism guide in Havana.  The line to get into the government-run supermarket, which can mean a wait of eight or 10 hours, was short, just two hours long. And better yet, the guide, Rainer Companioni Sánchez, scored toothpaste — a rare find — and splurged $3 on canned meat. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/world/americas/cuba-economy.html, accessed April 26 2021)
(3) (Havana Times, retrieved April 26, 2021, 
https://havanatimes.org/features/cuba-the-decline-of-a-country-running-out-of-food/).

Friday, May 7^th 2021
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
Today our son John Mark graduates with a marketing degree from the International School of Business at the University of South Carolina. He’ll leave soon for a two-year Teach for America assignment in a public elementary school in Baltimore. 
 
Join us in praying for him (and all our church graduates) in this new chapter.
 
* * *
 
Here’s a Friday poem submitted by cousin Tom.
 
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings; and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no 
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
+ e e cummings
e e cummings was the son of a Harvard professor who left the academy to become the ordained minister of South Congregational Church in Boston.  In this poem, cumming’s own theology comes through – influenced by both traditional Christianity and the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson – in a playful, modernist take on an Elizabethan sonnet (fourteen lines, closing couplet, and a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG).
 
* * *
 
Eric Corbin preaches this Mother’s Day Sunday. 9:00 a.m. at FirstPres.Live, or in-person for up to 50-people at 10:15.
 
Pay attention to God’s activity in the world around you.
            Be amazed.
                        Tell somebody.
 
 Much love to you all.
  
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
 
* * *

On a Sunday in April, we had 22 people enjoy the sunshine and conversation in West Side Park.  We will NOT gather this Sunday, May 9. It’s Mother’s Day!!!   Join us again Sunday, May 23, 11 am to noon.  

* * * 

From your Nurture Team — Last week’s photo challenge was a stumper.  There was only one guess and it missed the mark — Mark Laufenberg, that is!  
  
Here’s this week’s photo.  

Visit http://fb.com/groups/firstpreschampaign to make your guesses, or email them to photos@firstpres.church.  
 
Please join in the fun!  We are running very low on photos, so we would like you to select a photo from your younger years (grade school, high school or early adulthood). Photos need not be professional. Candid shots are welcome. Please send your photos to photos@firstpres.church.

* * *

We should hear this song once a year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_doAV8bx0xg

Under the Boardwalk…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKmKezVBdOQ