Monday May 18^th 2020
A Weekday Emailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
On Thursday, your Session will elect a Covid-19 Response Team; after that election, I’ll share their names with you so you can begin picking their brains. They will add their brain power and mighty spirits to all of the serious
thinking and praying that has been going into the basic question we all wonder about: When will be begin face to face worship?
 
Right now, gathering face to face is premature. But talking about it, and making plans is not. The Worship Team with Peter Yau’s advice has been dreaming about plans for when we gather again.
 
I’ve been thinking “what ifs” about our return to face to face worship. Consider this:

After the stay at home order has been lifted, the governor (guided by public health officials and good science) has suggested stages that will guide public gatherings such as face to face worship in local sanctuaries. 
 
We are in stage two now. At stage three in our region, arriving perhaps by June 1, face-to-face public gatherings will include no more than 10 people with proper social distancing and masks. Stage four, which may arrive by July
1^st at the soonest, might suggest that our sanctuary can be filled with up to 50 people per face-to-face service. Stage five, after a vaccine is available, would allow us to return to normal worship attendance practices.
Who knows when stage five will come; most people suggest that will be at least a year from now.
 
In each of these cases, people over 60-years-old (the age varies depending on whose standards one considers), and those with a compromised immune system of any age would be urged not to gather face-to-face for any non-essential
functions. 
 
If stage four begins in July, that might mean 50 people under the age of sixty who are well can gather for face-to-face worship in our sanctuary. Their temperatures might be taken at the door near the parking lot. They’d be
required to wear face masks for the good of the community; only families would sit together; everyone else would be physically distanced around the sanctuary, from the front pew to the back, from the left to the right. 
 
Does the idea of asking everyone over the age of 60 to stay at home hurt your soul? Mine, too. Who gets to tell them to go home?
 
Does taking forehead temperature scans in the parking lot sound welcoming? It sounds inhospitable to me, also. 
 
And who gets to turn away the 51^st person? Who will tell the family arriving late, “We’ve run out of space. You must go home?” (Or, go to the chapel and watch worship on a screen.)
 
This is not an ideal configuration of worship. Does it feel Draconian? It does to me, also.
 
While the goals we set for face to face gatherings will, surely, be designed to keep everyone safe, and while they might be most prudent and theologically “moral,” they may seem harsh. And, perhaps not everyone will agree.

 
Some of you have admitted that you won’t be back in face-to-face worship until there is a vaccine. Some have said that when the coast is clear, they won’t be in the first wave to return. Others of you are ready. I,
certainly, am. 
 
But at what cost will we gather? 
 
What will be gained? 
 
What could be lost?
 
Pray about these matters with me and write me a private note about the best, safest, and most humane way to move forward. If you find a great link pointing to good science about public gatherings, send it to me; I’ll forward it to
the Response Team. Your staff and leaders have been talking about these things and holding them up to the light from every angle. Our Covid-19 Response Team will begin the first of their many conversations this week.
 
I am certain we will get there. 
 
I just don’t know when, or, precisely, how.
 
I’m trusting our Shepherd, who says in John’s gospel, he is the way. Faithfully, one step at a time, I endeavor to follow.
 
Thanks, in advance. 
 
 News:
 
Chuck Milazzo died last week. We rejoice his baptism is complete in death, and we grieve with his family his earthly absence.
 
Wednesday Vespers: This week, The Gathering Band will join us for a concert. Tune it at 7:00 on this Wednesday at FirstPres.Live
 
CU-Better Together Coming together to fight hunger and give hope to school families in need. Here is the sign up for the Interfaith Alliance. Please share widely. Thank you!
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F044EAEA822ABFA7-cubetter
 
 Men’s Tuesday Bible Study! Join them tomorrow from 8:00 am-9:00 am (email info@firstpres.church for the link)
 
 Dog & Cat Humor (From Claudia Kirby): Day seven at home and the dog is looking at me like, “See? This is why I chew the furniture!”
 
(From Diane Mortensen:) What’s the difference between a cat and a comma?
One has claws at the end of its paws, and one is a pause at the end of a clause.
 
Confuse your doctor by putting on rubber gloves at the same time he does. 
 
Good Word:
 
Psalm 66:8-12 The Message (MSG)
 

8-12 Bless our God, O peoples! Give him a thunderous welcome! Didn’t he set us on the road to life? Didn’t he keep us out of the ditch? He trained us first, passed us like silver through refining fires, Brought us
into hardscrabble country, pushed us to our very limit, Road-tested us inside and out, took us to hell and back;

Finally he brought us to this well-watered place.
 
Let us pray:
 
O Thou Eternal God, out of whose absolute power and infinite intelligence the whole universe has come into being, we humbly confess that we have not loved thee with our hearts, souls and minds, and we have not loved our neighbors as
Christ loved us. We have all too often lived by our own selfish impulses rather than by the life of sacrificial love as revealed by Christ. We often give in order to receive. We love our friends and hate our enemies. We go the first
mile but dare not travel the second. We forgive but dare not forget. 
 
And so, as we look within ourselves, we are confronted with the appalling fact that the history of our lives is the history of an eternal revolt against you. But thou, O God, have mercy upon us. Forgive us for what we could have been
but failed to be. Give us the intelligence to know your will. 
 
Give us the courage to do your will. 
 
Give us the devotion to love thy will. 
 
In the name and spirit of Jesus we pray. Amen. 
 
(Adapted, Martin Luther King, Jr.)
 
Much, much love to you all.
 
PEACE,
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church

Washing the Elephant

BY BARBARA RAS
 
 
Isn’t it always the heart that wants to wash
the elephant, begging the body to do it
with soap and water, a ladder, hands,
in tree-shade big enough for the vast savannahs
of your sadness, the strangler fig of your guilt,
the cratered full moon’s light fueling
the windy spooling memory of elephant?
 
What if Father Quinn had said, “Of course you’ll recognize
your parents in heaven,” instead of
“Being one with God will make your mother and father
pointless.” That was back when I was young enough
to love them absolutely though still fear for their place
in heaven, imagining their souls like sponges full
of something resembling street water after rain.
 
Still my mother sent me every Saturday to confess,
to wring the sins out of my small baffled soul, and I made up lies
about lying, disobeying, chewing gum in church, to offer them
as carefully as I handed over the knotted handkercheif of coins
to the grocer when my mother sent me for a loaf of Wonder,
Land O’Lakes, and two Camels.
 
If guilt is the damage of childhood, then eros is the fall of adolescence.
Of the fall begins there, and never ends, desire after desire parading
through a lifetime like the Ringling Brothers elephants
made to walk through the Queens-Midtown Tuunnel
and down 34th Street to the Garden.
So much of our desire like their bulky, shadowy walking
after midnight, exiled from the wild and destined
for a circus with its tawdry gaudiness, its unspoken
pathos. 
 
It takes more than half a century to figure out who they were,
the few real loves-of-your-life and how much of the rest—
the mad breaking-heart stickiness—falls away, slowly,
unnoticed, the way you lose your taste for things
like Popsicles unthinkingly.
And though dailiness may have no place
for the ones that have etched themselves in the laugh lines
and frown lines on the face that’s harder and harder
to claim as your own, often one love-of-your-life
will appear in a dream, arriving
with the weight and certitude of an elephant,
and it’s always the heart that wants to go out and wash
the huge mysteriousness of what they meant, those memories
that have only memories to feed them, and only you to keep them clean.  
 
Barbara Ras, “Washing the Elephant” from The Last Skin.  Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Ras.

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