Thursday, February 18^th, 2021
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Friends,
 
It was amazingly good to see about a dozen of you yesterday in our first-ever “drive-by” imposition of Ash Wednesday ashes. We all have soooo much to look forward to. 
 
Another few dozen of you were at last night’s Wednesday vespers led artfully by Pastor Eric. 
 
* * *
 
Remember for those of you who feel safe, our in-person worship service will resume on this Sunday at 10:15 in the sanctuary. See below. Please note that snow is in the forecast. The north west door into the parking lot will definitely be open, and we hope a salted path will lead up to it.
 
* * *
 
Here’s a poem that points us to Easter. Consider it as, together, we make our way with Jesus to Jerusalem.
 
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer 
Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
 
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
 
“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1973. Also published by Counterpoint Press in The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999; The Mad Farmer Poems, 2008; New Collected Poems, 2012.

* * * 
 
News
 
Please sign up for the book study. (Call the office.) 
 
BOOK STUDY!  You are invited to a congregation-wide four session book study. 
 
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. 
• 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 each other.

* * *
 
Destin Lembelembe, one of our recent high school grads (Urbana, 2019) has a new sales job selling knives and he needs thirty of us to attend his first sales pitch. Rachel and I have agreed to be at his virtual presentation, and I hope some of you will agree, too. His email follows. Be in touch if you’re willing. It’s nice to give our young people a boost when we can. 
 
destinsoccer.lembelembe@gmail.com
 
* * *

In-person Worship begins on February 21^st at 10:15.  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 21^st 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.
 
* * * 
 
Humor (Hard times really need godly laughter): 
 
From Marilyn Shimkus:

John Travolta tested negative for coronavirus last night. Turns out it
was just Saturday night fever.
 
* * *
 
Good Word (a familiar passage that you’ll hear on Sunday):
 
MARK 1:9-15               
⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
 
¹²And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
 
                  ¹⁴Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
 
 LET US PRAY
 
(Thank you, Linda Peterson)

May the blessing of light be on you 
(Scottish Blessing Prayer)
May the blessing of light be on you, light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire, so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it.
And may light shine out of the two eyes of you, like a candle set in the window of a house, bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm.
And may the blessing of the rain be on you, may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean, and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines, and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the earth be on you, soft under your feet as you pass along the roads, soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day; and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it.
May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly; up and off and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly.
 
* * *
 
Much, much love to you all.
 
 Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church

* * *

Lenten Daily Devotional from The Presbyterian Outlook
Thursday, FEBRUARY 18, 2021
ISAIAH 55:1-5
Isaiah 55 invites us to ponder the abundance of life in God, in marked contrast to the scarcity we experience in a world that so often seems short on resources. While in Babylonian captivity, exiled Israelites were faced with the scarcity of basic necessities of life, as are many people around the globe and in our own country, especially amid a pandemic.
Practice: You are invited to pray Isaiah 55:1-5. Ponder deeply the images in
this text and sense the movements toward God and movements away from
God in your life that your reflection evokes. Where is there scarcity in your
life? Where is there abundance?
Journal: Take note in your journal of movements away from God and
movements toward God that surface in your awareness.