Wednesday August 12^th, 2020
A daily e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
Many of you are ready for face to face worship. I’m ready in my heart, but not in my head. Community Covid numbers are too high, the disease is too deadly, and gathering just isn’t safe enough. 
 
Yet. 
 
When? 
 
I don’t know. Your Covid-19 Response Team meets regularly, prays often, and pays close attention to CDC and daily local numbers, hospitals, and the health department.  They do not take their work lightly. Their singular goal is the safety of this flock.
 
Which brings me back to Sunday worship. We’ve never stopped worship. We’ve never stopped meeting. Committees and other gatherings still fly. We’ve added a gathering time on Wednesday evenings at 7:00, which is an varied program of prayer, program put on by our Mission Team, study (a Bible study is coming  up; and another short Rachel Held Evans film is forthcoming), music, and fellowship. It’s not the Lincoln Center, but  it’s  your church.
 
I’m surprised to learn that there are many saints in our church who don’t tune into our recorded services. A ton of energy and prayer go into those services, as I’m sure you know, and while people from all over the country tune in each week, when I look into that camera, I imagine your faces.
 
Tuning in might be easier than you think. Take a deep breath, and then go to FirstPres.Live and click which viewing option you want (watch on our webpage, on YouTube, or Facebook). 
 
You won’t see “slick” worship, you’ll see authentic, heartfelt worship.
 
You’ll see worship that is fuller when you tune in.
 
Take on Race:

BELHAR CONFESSION

In 1982, Reformed South African theologian Dirk Smit (now a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary) was one of the authors who drafted the Belhar Confession as a rebuke to Apartheid in the 1980s. The Belhar Confession articulates how the Gospel of Jesus Christ stands opposed to segregation, racism, and apartheid, all systemic evils of our time. (Click on the title above to ready the Belhar Confession
 
News:
 
Tonight join the mid-week gathering at 7 p.m.
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.

The Session has called a meeting of the Congregation to hear and act upon the report of the Congregation’s Officer Nominating Committee for 10 a.m. this Sunday, August 16.  The address for that meeting is firstpres.church/meeting
 
Humor/: (Serious times call for re-creation, joy, and humor.)
 
If seagulls fly over the sea, what flies over the bay? (Bagels, of course.)
 
Good Word:
 
Psalm 124 (again)
 
¹ If it had not been the Lord who was on our side
    —let Israel now say—
² if it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
    when our enemies attacked us,
³ then they would have swallowed us up alive,
    when their anger was kindled against us;
⁴ then the flood would have swept us away,
    the torrent would have gone over us;
⁵ then over us would have gone
    the raging waters.
⁶ Blessed be the Lord,
who has not given us
    as prey to their teeth.
⁷ We have escaped like a bird
    from the snare of the fowlers;
the snare is broken,
    and we have escaped.
⁸ Our help is in the name of the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.
 
Let us pray:
 
Everlasting God, 
in whom we live and move and have our being: 
You have made us for yourself, 
so that our hearts are restless 
until they rest in you. 
Give us purity of heart and strength of purpose, 
that no selfish passion may hinder us from knowing your will, 
no weakness keep us from doing it; 
that in your light we may see light clearly, 
and in your service find perfect freedom; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord, 
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, 
One God, now and forever.  AMEN
 
 PEACE to you all,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church

Monday August 10^th, 2020
A daily e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
  
Dear Friends,
 
Overheard: 
 
“It’s easy to have gratitude when you already have what you want.” (Anne Lamotte)
 
“The Jesus I grew up with in my Presbyterian church was quiet and nice, liked children, and didn’t cause waves. Then I read the Bible.” (Rev. Liz  Theoharis)
 
* * *
Let Comfort Come
We read while form stays
still and waits. The words sing
or speak, clamber on or say
or tell or even sometimes step
aside and hope we wander in.
Everywhere within the form
of letter, word, space, structure
rests the hush around the hurry,
the opening wherein any form —
table, door, the lover’s arm
and tongue, the cat asleep
on the sill—lies the quiet,
the shawl around us all
who have to clatter through.
Let be be the nothing of not.
–Jack Ridl
First published in The Colorado Review
Subsequently published in Saint Peter and the Goldfinch (Wayne State University Press)
 
Take on Race:
The Presbyterian Church USA hopes to be a transformative church in this intercultural era by taking eight steps to end racism. Those steps are:
1.)    RECOGNITION—As it happened in John 20:11–18, like Mary Magdalene, we hear our names called and recognize that we are captive to the power of race. We cease denying that race has power in our individual and communal lives. 
2.)    REPENTANCE—We acknowledge to ourselves and to others that race has power in our lives and contributes to our white privilege. 
3.)    RESISTANCE—We commit ourselves to combating the power of racism in ourselves, in others, in churches, and in institutional life. Because of its long reach in American history, at times we will feel like those who are battling principalities and powers in Ephesians 6:10–20. 
4.)    RESILIENCE—We are called to affirm the traditional ways of combating racism while seeking new ways to engage a powerful force that continues to be present in American life and that continues to evolve.
5.)    REPARATIONS—We commit ourselves to doing our part to repair the breaches that have been made through racism, including psychological, spiritual, and economic damage. 
6.)    RECONCILIATION—We recognize that we have long benefitted from racism and that in order for reconciliation to take place, we will need to work the first five steps listed above. 
7.)    RECOVERY—We receive and commit ourselves to live by a new vision of a humanity created by God to live in love, equity, and justice rather than in the hierarchy and domination of the system of race.
8.)    RESONANCE—We understand and resonate with our own cultural background.
 
News:
 
Your Covid-19 Response Team met last week: (1) We agreed to meet in early September to revisit when to reopen for face to face worship; the group still feels opening is unwise given the Covid numbers upward drift. We wonder if influx of UI students will radically change community Covid cases. (2) We talked about upcoming funerals, use of van for the confirmation class, DREAAM work on campus, the health of our church staff, and the possibility of outdoor small group meetings hosted by Nurture Committee.

Tuesdays Men’s Bible Study 8 am
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.

 
Humor/the body edition: (Serious times call for re-creation, joy, and humor.)
 
From Tom Gilmore: Why did the teddy bear turn down a second helping? Because he was stuffed.
 
Good Word:
 
1 John 4:7-8                            
(New Revised Standard Version) Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
 
Let us pray:
 
Guide our steps, Holy God,
and our tonguelisteningthinkingwon-
deringhopingreachingrelationships,
jobsprayersparentingcareintellect,
our hello and goodbye,
our comings and goings,
our then and now,
our hither and yon.
 
Guide our steps, Holy God.
 
Amen.
 
PEACE to you all,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church

Friday 7 August 2020
 
Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois

Dear Friends, 
 
Sunday’s sermon is  about “Spirituality.”  How do you define that word, that work? Tune in on Sunday for worship and we can think about this together. See you Sunday at FirstPres.Live
 
* * *
 
Here’s a fascinating article and video about trees. Yes, trees. What the video, first. The visual is fantastic.
 
As an added Friday bonus, here are two poems from Robert Frost:
 
The Sound of Trees
 
I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.
 
* * *
 
Birches
 
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
 
* * *
 
See you on Sunday. Invite a friend.
 
Pay attention to God’s activity in the world around you.
                  Be amazed.
                                    Tell somebody.
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
864.386.9138
 
* * *
 
PHOTO Challenge! 

From your Nurture Team — There were no successful guesses of last Friday’s photo of Ann Stout!  

 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 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.
 
* * *
 
Friday concert/Robbin Thompson’s Good Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLyQ9sc8A78
 
Mellow with Wes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVgONy8kMY
 
Another kind of chill with Paul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAhHGYrzj2M
 
 
 

Thursday August 6^th, 2020
A daily e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
Thank you for those who came to last night’s Wednesday Night Prayer Zoom. We prayed for family, our church family, DREAAM, schools, teachers, police, people making changes, health care and business leaders, and . . .  Lord, hear our prayer.
 
Litany for the Church
 
That we may accept the responsibility of our freedom, the burden of our privilege, and so conduct ourselves as to set an example for those who will follow after;
 
O God, be our strength.
 
That we may not be content with a secondhand faith, worshiping words rather than the Word;

O God, be our strength.
 
That we may find joy in the study of Scripture and growth in exposure to new ideas;
 
O God, be our strength.
 
That we may be part of our churches, communities, and presbytery, sharing in the great mission, which you have set before us, and always seeking the common good;
 
O God, be our strength.
 
That we may find in your church a prod to our imaginations, a shock to our laziness, and a source of power to do your will;
 
O God, be our strength.
 
O God, who gave us minds to know you, hearts to love you, and voices to sing your praise; send your Spirit among us; that, confronted by your truth, we may be free to worship you and serve you as you have called us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.       
(adapted from The Worshipbook, 1970)  
 
Take on Race:
 
Antiracism is everyone’s work:
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/interview/antiracism-everyone-s-work
 
News:
 
Your Covid-19 Response Team meets this evening. Please remember them in prayer as they access how we are doing and when we might begin more face to face activities.
 
Humor/the body edition: (Serious times call for re-creation, joy, and humor.)

What did one banana say to the other? I find you a-peeling.