Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-02-01
Monday, February 1st, 2021
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Friends,
There’s a LOT in this daily emailer, and some important news and announcements:
The following great essay (and recipe) comes from Nancy Whitford. What better way to kick off a new month than by reflecting upon God’s call to model hospitality?
* * *
In-person worship will begin February 21. See the announcement below.
* * *
At the bottom of this essay is a long-ish blog from Diana Butler Bass about “silence.” We live in an age of lots of chest beating, angry tweeting, unhinged social media posts, and general volume. The recent snow invites silence. Consider my sermon from yesterday, then try Diana’s blog.
* * *
The Joy of Hospitality
Contribute to the needs of saints and seek to show hospitality. Romans 12:13
Throughout the Covid 19 pandemic, people have been asked what they’ve missed most during this sheltering-at-home period. Spending time with family and friends usually tops the list, followed by travel, dining out and attending movies and concerts. Of course, we’ve all missed being in church on Sundays, experiencing the service in person and interacting with our friends.
One thing that I’ve missed is the joy of hospitality. I love calling a friend or two and asking them to join me for a cup of tea at 4 in the afternoon or a glass of wine at 5. David and I have missed welcoming our friends into our home and sharing a special meal and a fun evening together.
In both the Old and New Testaments we learn of the importance of hospitality. Jesus’ first miracle, turning the water to wine at the wedding in Cana, occurred at a social event. As we read the story we can picture a festive occasion, with friends and family celebrating together.
When we’re able to return to church, I hope we can experience the joy of hospitality in our church life. We have a new kitchen so let’s use it to welcome friends and strangers. On several occasions Matt has asked for ideas of ways to use this new facility. Let’s all do our part and come up with a wide range of suggestions. We’re all hungry for social interaction.
Matt asked me to include a recipe that goes with my thoughts. So, here goes! I like to keep a tin of these crackers on hand, just in case someone drops by or I call a friend for a spur-of-the-moment get together. I look forward to the day when that happens again. Best of all, these crackers go well with both tea and wine!
Cheese Crackers
1 stick unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups flour (divided)
1 cup freshly grated cheddar cheese
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or more for a little more spice)
1 teaspoon salt
Mix all ingredients together, using 1 1/4 cups of flour. I have the best results when I pulse them together in my food processor until there is a ball of dough. Spread remaining flour on a wooden board. Place dough on the board, incorporate the additional flour, and roll it into a log, then wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Slice log into ¼ inch slices, place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, and bake in preheated 350-degree oven for approximately 20 minutes.
* * *
News
After careful discussion and prayerful deliberation, the COVID-19 team and the Session have recommended that we resume limited in-person weekly worship on the First Sunday of Lent, February 21st at 10:15 a.m.
For those of you who feel safe to attend, please pre-register by calling the church office at 217.356.7238. Registration will run from Monday morning to Thursday noon the week before each service. (We are preregistering not only as a means of contact-tracing, but also to keep attendance at or under fifty [50] people, including worship leaders and ushers. That is the limit prescribed by state public health guidelines.)
Remember, your Session is doing everything it can to keep everyone safe during this season of pandemic. While the end may be in sight with local and statewide numbers trending downward, not everyone is vaccinated yet and Covid-19 is still deadly. Some experts guess our nationwide death toll due to Covid may total over 600,000 by later this Spring.
The best way to safeguard against getting Covid is to limit one’s exposure to it and to get vaccinated; while we have prepared as safe a worship environment as possible, and all participants will be required to check in, wear masks at all times, and sit at a distance of six feet from other families, we cannot guarantee that somebody won’t get sick. Those who come to worship come at their own risk.
These in-person services will be, essentially, services of welcome, scripture, prayer, and preaching. These brief—40-minutes, or less—services will include no spoken liturgy, no congregational singing, and no choir. The preacher will speak from behind a plexiglass barrier. There will be no indoor fellowship, and no coffee or food service before or after the service.
This may not sound like a very welcoming or, even, friendly invitation, does it? You know what I mean. So, make wise decisions for you and your family, stay away if you are high risk or don’t feel well, and know that I look forward to “seeing” some of you online at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday (FirstPres.Live), and others of you face to face at 10:15 a.m.
God is good.
Matt Matthews
* * *
BOOK STUDY! You are invited to a congregation-wide four session book study on race.
- WHAT? Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World, 2015). A father talks to his fifteen-year-old son about the realities of inhabiting a black body.
- WHEN? Thursdays, February 18 and 25 and March 4 and 11 at 11:00am to 12:00 noon.
- HOW? Sign up by emailing or calling Patty Farthing in the church office. We will meet on-line via Zoom. 217.356.7238 / Patty@firstpres.church . Borrow books from our public library in paper, digital or audio form. To order through the church request copy by February 10 and transmit check to Patty.
- WHO? Everyone in our congregation and community is invited. Pastor Matt Matthews will facilitate. Our Compassion, Peace, and Justice Committee/ Spiritual Formation Committee will host.
- WHY? Jesus asks us to love “the other. A first step is listening to understand “the other”.
* * *
Humor (Hard times really need godly laughter):
Bill Gamble has something for us to think about. Comments?
From a high-school inspirational speaker from the middle of the last century:
“You will never need more than half of what you learn. The problem is that you do not know which half.”
* * *
Good Word:
If we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just
will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(1 John 1:8-9)
Let us pray:
Thank you, LORD.
For snow and light,
for busy day and quiet night,
for all wrong things
we strive, by God’s grace, to make right . . .
Thank you, LORD.
* * *
Much, much love to you all.
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
* * *
From The Cottage
by Diana Butler Bass
(from her blog read on 31 January 2021)
I woke up this morning to silence.
It is snowing in my neighborhood. And quiet accompanies snow. People inside to keep warm; no cars on the roads.
The winter landscape turned into a whitened world.
Silence.
This month, I’ve been thinking a lot about silence — and longing for it. Perhaps because of the January 6 madness, the screaming of the rioters, the QAnon lies. But partly because of the breathless, continuous outrage on social media and in the news. There’s a continual demand to take sides, speak out, prove one isn’t “complicit” with whatever structural injustice has become viral on any given day.
Yet, when I long for silence, two familiar quotes come to mind, both by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
And others as well remind me that speaking out is a necessary part of the work of justice.
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” — Elie Wiesel
“Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.” — Thurgood Marshall
“What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.” — Gaton Bachelard
“Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
There’s another MLK quote that I’ve been reflecting on this month: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
I emphasize the words, “about things that matter,” because not every silence leads to death. Only silence about things that matter. How do we know what matters if we are yelling all the time? If we live in perpetual outrage? If we never enter into silence to gain perspective, deepen understanding, and to discover what matters?
Right now, our public culture is marked by a sense that every single thing is a world-historical crisis to the nth degree. We are living in a time with multiple, demanding crises — climate change, economic inequality, the structural injustice of hierarchies of race and gender, and the challenges of technological society and globalization. Few generations of human beings have had to face such a set of interlocking challenges, and these difficult times demand insistent, passionate, and clear voices — those who point to the problems and offer possible solutions.
But understanding these problems and leading toward solutions isn’t about viral tweets, jumping on the cause of the day, or public shaming of those who resist the latest bandwagon. The things that matter are often a matter of discernment, research, creativity, empathy, and innovation — the things that matter aren’t always entirely visible, and the things that matter are something just beyond what is immediately obvious. We sometimes think we know what matters only to learn later that we were wrong.
Thus, we need to recognize that there are two kinds of silence involved in the work of justice and the common good: some silence is that of neutrality, ignorance, or fear; yet other silences are that of inner work, healing and insight, and making room for new awareness and activism. The latter needs to be encouraged, and the former needs to be challenged and overcome. Silence can be consent or complicity; but silence can also be mourning past words, a voiceless sorrow and suffering, pain without any shape other than groaning. It is extremely important to be able to discern one from the other.
There are silences that are wrong, sinful, evil; there are silences that are the most holy of things possible.
Some silence fuels injustice; some silence is truth in the face of injustice.
Silence can be indifference. Silence can also be profound empathy, a stunning solidarity.
Silence can emerge from fear, but silence can also be a strategy of survival by victims or potential victims of injustice and violence.
Put simply, not all silence is the same. Knowing when to speak, knowing when to hold silence — this is a spiritual practice. And it is wisdom.
Mystics of all religious traditions have known this. So many of history’s greatest activists for justice have also been history’s most profound contemplatives. Silence and justice are not opposing energies, but part of a single fabric of our inner and outer lives. Silence is not quietism. Instead, silence is guide and path toward the world envisioned by our gurus, prophets, and God.
I can’t say I know this from being one such contemplative. I know it from being a writer. For writers are contemplatives of a sort — we withdraw to discover the things that matter and to put just the right words to those things. Writerly silence is often the hardest of practices (at least for me), as I’d prefer to be in the fray, at the protest, pontificating online, and preaching prophetically. But silence is necessary for the right sentence to be birthed so that the things that matter may shine brightly in written word. Not every word does this. But the best work — the work of transforming the world — comes into being when words that matter and things that matter converge. And, I know from experience, that doesn’t happen without blanketing silence.
You can’t force someone into or out of such a silence. That silence is an enveloping cloud, the hush of the snow storm — it just is. It is like Jesus’s forty days in the desert or his refusal to speak before Pilate; Paul’s three years of contemplation and learning; Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. Silence should be welcomed for its generative power, not condemned as a moral failing.
America needs to wake up in silence.
Silence. To hear. To see a different landscape. Wait in silence until the snow melts.
We need the counter-cultural practice of silence.
Perhaps if we keep more silence instead of less, we’ll be able to speak words that matter and understand the things that matter to face the crises that threaten our neighbors and our future. We are in desperate need of the right words about the right things.
—
For more from Diana, see the following link:
https://dianabutlerbass.
