Thursday May 14^th 2020
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
Thanks to all of you who participated in last night’s Online Prayer Meeting. Seeing your faces was great. Praying with you was water on the moon. I think these connections really matter. 
 
* * *
 
When my friend the Rev. Jim Shiflett retired from Chicago Presbytery, I got to be his pastor for several years when we lived in South Carolina. Jim was a biblical storyteller, and he and I led Bible studies together. One of the amazing gifts he brought to Bible study is he got us all thinking about where we were in this text, how this text pulled at our flesh and spirit. I had learned about exegeting the text, of course. And I exegeted the congregation to which I preached, carrying, like the dense theologian Karl Barth, the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other when I trudged up to the pulpit. 
 
But thinking more intently about how the text lifted me, hooked me, harpooned me was new. I hadn’t spent as much time thinking about this. It shook my bones.
 
Jim died this Christmas, and he keeps popping up in my life everywhere. Like on one of my last trips to Chicago, where Tom Ulen and I took a bunch of First Pres people to the Art Institute. 
 
 At an Italian dinner at a long table in front of warm ovens on a cold, January night, I leaned over the table and asked my friend Tom to please pass me the brussels sprouts the table was sharing. 
 
Simple question, I thought. 
 
But he paused, and smiled that smile of his.
 
“I’ll hand you the brussels sprouts,” he said, “but first, let me invite you to answer three questions.”
 
Another pause. 
 
“Question number one: How many teeth does a horse have?”
 
We laughed. 
 
Others at our end of the table leaned in as I badly failed the test. We listened to Tom explain that when his granddaughters ask for ice cream, or to stay up late, or to go to the park, he’ll always stop them and say, “First, let me invite you to answer three questions.” All parties are delighted with the conversations these questions ignite. 
 
The questions are his way of connecting with his grandkids. They step out of the moment to ponder what Grandpa has asked them. It’s a way that Tom grows a deeper relationship with these children he adores. They learn more about each other, of course, and, as importantly, they learn about themselves. They also learn other important things—like how many teeth a horse has.
 
My friends Jim and Tom are on the same theological wavelength. Slow down. Think more deeply. Is the question you’re asking really the question you want ask? What is the deep context of our questions, our traditions, our history, our ken, our appetites?
 
Now, when I study the scripture, like always, I pray and ask God to open the text to my dim understanding. And now, thanks to Tom and Jim, often times, an image of Jesus pops into my brain. He smiles that smile of his and says, “I’d be glad to illumine this text for you, Matt.”
 
Pause.
 
“But first, let me invite you to answer three questions.” 
 
News:
 
How many teeth does a horse have? The horse will normally have 24 deciduous teeth, emerging in pairs, and eventually pushed out by the permanent teeth, which normally number between 36 and 40.) 
 
Humor (from Dave Hunter:) What kind of music do windmills like? They’re metal fans.
 
Good Word: (Notice the holy pause in second sentence of v. 6.)
 
John 8: 4-7   [T]hey said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
 
Let us pray:
 
Grant unto us, O God, the fullness of your promises. 
Where we have been weak,
grant us your strength;
where we have been confused,
grant us your guidance;
where we have been distraught,
grant us your comfort;
where we have been dead,
grant us your life.
Apart from you, O Lord,
we are nothing.
 
In and with you 
we can do all things.
 
AMEN.
 
(United Church of Canada, Service Book, 1969.)
 
 
Much, much love to you all.
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
 

Wednesday May 13^th 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/watch?v=vp_Yez3ZhJs 
 
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                G
I was born to privilege that I did not see 
                Am                         F
Lack of pigment in my skin, won a free and easy in 
         C               G       F     C
I didn’t know it, but my way was paved 
 
 
                                     F
I grew up a Catholic boy, in a north-eastern State 
                     C                                     G
A place when asked, “Where you from?”, some people tend to hesitate 
        Am                               F
Reply a little bit late, as if maybe you didn’t rate 
C             G             F     C
I was born to ignorance and privilege 
 
 
                                             F
My dad ran a printing press, a tag and label factory 
                 C                         G
May have seen it as a child, now a distant memory 
           Am                           F
Almost too faint to see, dark red-brick factory 
         C               G       F     C
I didn’t know it, but my way was paved 
 
 
                                           F
We moved from a city street, shortly after I arrived 
                C                               G
To a house on a gravel road, where I learned to be alive 
              Am                                     F
Crawl, walk, run and ride, that’s where I learned to come alive 
         C               G       F     C
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       Am
You may never know the wind is there 
Dm7                    G
You may never hear the sound, no, no
 
 
                C                              F
Got to grow and go to school, work at home and dream at night 
          C                        G
Even be a college fool, like I had any right 
             Am                         F
Never went through a war, never Great Depression poor 
         C               G       F     C
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 G F   C   G   F C
 
 
CHORUS:
F              G       C
If the wind is at your back
F             G     C
And you never turn around 
F             G        C       Am
You may never know the wind is there 
Dm7                    G
You may never hear the sound, no, no
 
 
              C                          F
I was born to ignorance, yes, and lesser poverties 
              C                G
I was born to privilege that I did not see 
                Am                         F
Lack of pigment in my skin, won a free and easy in 
         C               G       F     C
I didn’t know it, but my way was paved 
       F             G             F     C    F C   F C
‘Cause I was born to ignorance and privilege

Monday May 11^th  2020
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
Do you miss Ahmaud Arbery? 
 
I didn’t know about his terrible murder until the sickening, sickening account on the Thursday morning news. It happened six weeks ago. An athletic 25-year-old, he went out for a jog in his neighborhood and never came home. Brunswick, GA, is predominately white. Mr. Arbery was black. 
 
My black friends tell me—as they have told me before in countless other similar cases—that Mr. Arbery was simply “guilty of being black.”
 
What is my response to this? 
 
First, I’d like to think it’s not true. How can just having brown skin put one at greater risk of random violence. But I know better. Then, I benignly tell myself that Georgia isn’t Champaign-Urbana, I’m not a white supremacist, I didn’t shoot anyone, I like everybody, I’d never discriminate based on color. I tell myself that my “whiteness” is the good kind. I tell myself that the divisions suggested by different skin color, and gender, and country of origin, and, and, and, don’t affect me. My excuses go on and on, get thinner and thinner, more and more untrue.
 
When I finally admit that I’m part of the problem (and part of the answer), I ask myself how can I help build the world about which I routinely preach? How can I become the man I aspire to be? How can I admit the painful parts of my life, my family, my assumptions, my intricate ideologies? Do I dare examine my privilege—the drawer of silver spoons which I’ve been dealt? How do I marshal insight from my cushioned past and use it to fuel a better-for-all-us future? Am I brave enough? Who will help me? 
 
Discrimination is part of the world, and, certainly, part of the Coronavirus story, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. I’m paying attention. I can’t look away. Ahmaud Arbery won’t let me.
 
So, I’m praying harder than ever.
 
News:
 
Bill Stout reports this: A recent study showed that 40% of US households with a mother and children under 12 present are currently experiencing food insecurity, and that is not even factoring in race or woman being head of household, either of which will drive the % much higher. I was stunned. 
 
Me, too, Bill. Me, too.
 
Wednesday Vespers: Join your church friends, and our growing internet community, for a prayer Zoom prayer service at 7:00 on Wednesday. I look forward to seeing you. Please join us. It’ll be good for us to unite. Log on: FirstPres.Live
 
Good Word: (A difficult word.)
 
Amos 3:1, 2, 4, 9-12 
 
But I said:
Hear, leaders of Jacob, 
rulers of the house of Israel!
Isn’t it your job to know justice?—
²   you who hate good and love evil,
who tear the skin off [my people],
and the flesh off their bones . . . 
⁴ Then they will cry out to the Lord,
 but he won’t answer them.
He will hide his face from them at that time,
because of their evil deeds.
⁹ Hear this, leaders of the house of Jacob,
 rulers of the house of Israel,
you who reject justice and make crooked all that is straight,
¹⁰  who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with injustice!

¹¹ Her officials give justice for a bribe,
 and her priests teach for hire.
Her prophets offer divination for silver,
yet they rely on the Lord, saying,
 “Isn’t the Lord in our midst?
 Evil won’t come upon us!”
¹² Therefore, because of you, 
Zion will be plowed like a field,
 Jerusalem will become piles of rubble,
and the temple mount will become an overgrown mound.
 
Let us pray:
 
Oh God our Creator and our Sustainer,
we’re here this morning coming 
with many forms and many fashions.
We ask that you’d remove all obstacles, 
all feelings, all attitudes, anything that 
may be getting in our way.
Anything that may be burdening our souls.
Strengthen us when we are weak,
and build us up when we are torn down.
 
But most of all God,
we pray that you’d show us the way.
Show us the way not to fortune nor fame,
nor to win morals or praise for our name,
but show us the way to tell the great story,
to live the great story.
 
And thine is the Kingdom and the Power and Glory.
Amen.
 
(Katie G. Cannon) 
 
Much, much love to you all. 
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
 

Friday 8 May 2020
 
Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois 

Dear Friends,
 
Yesterday I posted a song from Godspell drawn from a psalm of lament, Psalm 137. That song touched a nerve. Many of you liked that tune. Jennifer Black shared this version of that Psalm by Linda Ronstadt. Give it a listen: 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u60fXbTsMDg
 
I’ll be preaching about lament on Sunday. JIP has a story to tell about his recent sadnesses; and a lesson to share. 
 
I’ve been channeling my friend John Williams, chaplain at Austin College, by thinking about sad song lyrics. I’ve shared my top eight below; coming up with ten would have bummed me out. Lament as a form of prayer gives us permission to grieve, weep, complain, holler, moan, sit on our pity pot. Lament is a way of sharing the darker parts of ourselves with God. Lament gets it off our chests into God’s able hands. 
 
While I’m on the subject of lament, I recently erased the dry-erase board in my office. Goodbye to notes for some of the events this spring to which I was mightily looking forward: Ebert Fest, sharing local art in Westminster Hall with you during the Boneyard Arts Festival, Cuba Sunday, and a Cuba Trip. None that that happened. We would have grown, had fun, laughed, cried. We have so many things to look forward to, but these opportunities are gone. 
 
Is it okay to be sorry? To feel bad? Lamentation has place in a spiritual life. 
 
I’ll ‘see’ you on Sunday.
 
Turn on your “device” and find us at:   FirstPres.Live
 
Pay attention to God’s activity in the world around you.
            Be amazed.
                       Tell somebody.
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
 
 
* * *
 
New fun photo challenge! Each Friday the Nurture Committee is challenging us to read an assigned scripture about Jesus and come up with a representation of the story using whatever you already have around the house and share it in photo form.
 
CHALLENGE #4
 
 MIRACLES-????? You choose! The Petersons chose John 2:1-11
Many people came to Jesus in need.
Some sick and some lame, and some broken indeed
And often Jesus would heal, touch or feed
News of Him spread around Israel with speed
 
There are many stories of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible
 
With your family, pick your favorite miracle story and read it together.
Take a photo that represents the miracle or write the verse and take a photo with it.
 
Post your photo to:
 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/firstpreschampaign/
 live@firstpres.church
 For Instagram @fpcchampaign
 
Example
 

 
 
Fathers and sons. A Fred Craddock story:
https://www.cnn.com/2011/11/27/us/craddock-profile/index.html
 
* * *
 
Your Pastor’s Favorite Songs of Lament:
 
1-Big River/Johnny Cash
Well I taught that weeping willow how to cry cry cry,
Taught the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky.
Tears I cried for that woman are gonna flood you big river,
And I’m a gonna sit right here until I die.
 
2-Hank Williams, Sr./I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
Here that lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whinning low
I’m so lonesome I could cry
 
I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind the clouds
To hide its face and cry…

3-Sad/Yours Truly 
Sad is the suffering, name brands and diamond ring.
Sad is having everything and nothing at all.
Sad is a sunset sky. The pretty girl likes the other guy. 
Sad is the seagull’s cry, flying over the bay.
Lord, have mercy on my tired, sad, sad soul
By your mercy, make your broken people whole
 
4-Yesterday/The Beatles
Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday
 
5-Mister Bojangles/The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
He said I dance now at every chance and honky tonks
For drinks and tips
But most the time I spend behind these county bars
Cause I drinks a bit
He shook his head and as he shook his head
I heard someone ask please
Mr Bojangles
Mr Bojangles
Mr Bojangles
Dance
 
6-The River/Bruce Springsteen
I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well Mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don’t remember
Mary acts like she don’t care
 
But I remember us riding in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse?
 
7-Daniel/Elton John
Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
And I can see Daniel waving goodbye
Oh it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
 
8-Sultans of Swing/Dire Straits
And then the man he steps right up to the microphone
And says at last just as the time bell rings
“Goodnight, now it’s time to go home”
Then he makes it fast with one more thing
“We are the Sultans . . .
We are the Sultans of Swing”