Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-07-15
Wednesday July 15, 2020
A daily e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Dear Friends,
I talked to a friend who talked to a friend who talked to a friend who was tired of talking about race. He said, essentially, “I have nothing left to learn. I like everyone. I am not a racist.”
Ouch!
Stay the course, friends. Let’s keep learning, growing, reaching.
Take on Race:
June 28 was the birthday of the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley (1703). He was born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England, and his father was a Nonconformist — a dissenter from the Church of England. Wesley studied at Oxford, where he decided to become a priest. He and his brother joined a religious study group that was given the nickname “the Methodists” for their rigorous and methodical study habits; the name wasn’t meant as a compliment, but Wesley hung onto it anyway and managed to attract several new members to the group, which fasted two days a week and spent time in social service.
By 1739, he felt he wasn’t really reaching people from the pulpit, so he took to the fields, traveling on horseback, preaching two or three times a day. He began recruiting local laypeople to preach as well, and ran afoul of the Church of England for doing so. He believed that Christians could be made “perfect in love” when their actions arose out of a desire to please God and to promote the welfare of the less fortunate. He wrote: “Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment. It is not only ‘the first and great’ command, but all the commandments in one. ‘Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,’ they are all comprised in this one word, love.”
He was also an ardent abolitionist. In Thoughts on Slavery (1774), he wrote: “Are you a man? Then you should have a human heart. But have you indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as Compassion there? Do you never feel another’s pain? Have you no Sympathy? No sense of human woe? No pity for the miserable? When you saw the flowing eyes, the heaving breasts, or the bleeding sides and tortured limbs of your fellow-creatures, was you a stone, or a brute? Did you look upon them with the eyes of a tiger? When you squeezed the agonizing creatures down in the ship, or when you threw their poor mangled remains into the sea, had you no relenting? Did not one tear drop from your eye, one sigh escape from your breast? Do you feel no relenting now? If you do not, you must go on, till the measure of your iniquities is full. Then will the Great GOD deal with You, as you have dealt with them, and require all their blood at your hands.”
He’s said to have traveled 250,000 miles, preached 40,000 sermons, and written, translated, or edited more than 200 volumes. He made £20,000 for his publications but gave most of it away and died in poverty. Though there’s no evidence that he actually wrote it himself, “John Wesley’s Rule” does a fair job of summing up his life:
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.
* * *
4-minutes 16-seconds with Oscar Romero:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
News:
Mary Gritten wants to share the sad news of the death of a cousin-in-law yesterday. (Steve’s cousin’s husband.) “They live in FL so we have made it a point to visit with them every winter. How we did enjoy our time together. Bob, the one who died, and I disagreed about many issues but we always were able to laugh and tease and have fun about those differences. And to look forward to the next round. We liked and respected each other even while taking opposite positions. I will miss him, as will Steve.”
Holy God, bless Mary and Steve as they grieve this loss.
* * *
Todd Ledbetter funeral highlights. (Thanks Ian Evensen.)
https://www.facebook.com/
* * *
Join us at 7:00 p.m. tonight for conversation and a concert. This link is:
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Thursday
Youth Gathering 4 pm
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Humor: (Serious times call for re-creation, joy, and humor.)
- What kind of dance did the snowman go to? (A snowball.)
GOOD WORD: THE GLORIOUS NEW CREATION
Isaiah 65:17-25 (NRSV)
17 For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
20 No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;[a]
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—
and their descendants as well.
24 Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.
Let us pray:
With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day
when black will not be asked to get in back,
when brown can stick around
when yellow will be mellow…
when the red man can get ahead, man;
and when white will embrace what is right.
That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.
(Rev. Joseph Lowry)
PEACE to you all,
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
