Ongoing Response to COVID-19
Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-07-29
Wednesday July 29, 2020
A daily e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Dear Friends,
Here is a great devotion from my friend Rev. Kevin Murphey. Be enriched:
These words of Isaiah (noted below) were written centuries before Jesus was born, yet they describe him so completely the gospel writers are confident it is referring to him. Jesus certainly is the one who will bring forth justice, quietly, gently, diligently, faithfully. The way Jesus lived and ministered to all he met is surely how we too are called to bring forth justice. Those who have been bruised by this world, those whose spirits are dimly burning need us, even deserve for us to carry on Jesus’ life-giving work. We need not shout it out in the street. We can be adamant without being obnoxious. And the only way we can do it is by relying on God’s Spirit.
What does bringing forth justice look like in today’s world? It begins with understanding each other. We hear their stories and by listening well, rather than trying to lift up our own voice and tell them how they ought to live, we find the places of connection between us. From those stories we also learn what it is that motivates them, what are they passionate about, what are they good at doing. When we get to know the other we also come to understand what bruises them, where in their lives their spiritual wick is burning down. Hopefully, they are listening to us and our stories also. Then God’s amazing Spirit walks with us and helps us develop deep empathy for them. Our imaginations begin to work and we start coming up with new and fresh ideas that move the world toward justice. It is slow work. It cannot be rushed. New relationships need time to deepen. We need to rely upon God’s help, so prayer and listening for God’s guidance is a must.
The work of bringing forth justice is good and necessary work anytime, but especially today. There are so many bruised reeds and dimly burning wicks out there. There are so many structures that do not treat everyone fairly or equally. This is the work of Christ and it is the work to which Christ calls his church. In doing it we are made new, we are refreshed by God’s Spirit, we find joy in sharing God’s love. In doing it we are being the blessing for which God has blessed us.
Take on Race:
Light looked down and saw darkness.
“I will go there,” said Light.
Peace looked down and saw war.
“I will go there,” said Peace.
Love looked down and saw hatred.
“I will go there,” said Love.
So he, The Lord of Light,
the Prince of Peace,
the King of Love,
came down and crept in beside us.
Praise the LORD.
The Lord’s name be praised.
News:
Prayers for Sarah Laufenberg’s family are appreciated. Her dad, Gordon, is expected to be in hospice care soon. Prayers for Gordon, wife Kathleen, our local Laufenbergs are appreciated… “Be good to me, Dear Lord; the sea is so wide and my boat is so small.”
Wednesday (tonight!) Mid-Week Gathering 7 pm
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Humor: (Serious times call for re-creation, joy, and humor.)
These from Ruth Craddock:
Does anyone know what page of the Bible explains how to change water to wine? Asking for a friend.
Yesterday my husband saw a cockroach in the kitchen. He sprayed everything down and cleaned thoroughly. Today I’m putting the cockroach in the bathroom.
GOOD WORD:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. Isaiah 42:1-4
Let us pray:
Holy God, we pray that families who grieve might be strengthened by your presence. Where there is pain, bring comfort. Where there is sorrow, bring the healing of your joy. Redeem our memories. Help us, by your Holy Grace, to commend our lives and work to your merciful and eternal care. AMEN.
PEACE to you all,
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-07-28
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Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-07-27
Monday July 27, 2020
A daily e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Dear Friends,
One of the many hard things about pandemic is how our rituals around death have changed. No big funeral. No robust hymns. No reception with food afterwards. Many families are awaiting to bury their dead until the time when we can gather for a proper service. While waiting is not satisfactory, what is the alternative?
This is hard on families, but it’s hard on church families, too. Gathering together—congregating—when there is a death is what the church family does. We mark milestones with worship, with a holy pause, with an opportunity for collective praise. This difficult silence is deafening.
Many of you have lost loved ones and could not travel for the small graveside. Or you are one of the many families waiting for a larger memorial service at such a time when it’s safe to gather.
We know that God’s Spirit intercedes for us with “sighs too deep for words” and that our sighs of grief are matched by God’s at least sigh for sigh. This is good news, but our grief and this unnatural waiting is hard, so hard.
Today please pray for those who have experienced loss during pandemic.
Take on Race:
On Memorial Day and Veterans Day we say “Veterans Lives Matter,” and we thank God.
On Labor Day we say “Workers Lives Matter,” and we thank God.
On 9-11 we say “Blue Lives Matter,” and we thank God.
On Presidents’ Day we say “Lincoln & Washington (and others) Lives Mattered,” and we thank God.
Our church has affirmed these and other times of special pause. We celebrate the Irish (at St. Patrick’s Day), and our largely European Heritage on Reformation Sunday, and our particular connections with Scotland in the Kirking of the Tartan. We celebrate and thank God for our LGBTQIA friends and family at nationwide Pride weekends.
In our church, we have long affirmed, and not been ashamed to say, “Children’s Lives Matter,” “Young Lives Matter,” “Immigrants’ Lives Matter,” “University Lives Matter,” “Women’s Lives Matter.”
I came to this church largely because of the efforts you made to embrace the world through ESL, the welcome of all races, and the special efforts to welcome Congolese and other new immigrants into the protective, celebratory fold of the church.
Celebrating these disparate members of the whole-wide household of God are all worthy celebrations. Why? Because God made and blessed us all, and, of course, all lives matter. So we lift up our youth on “Youth Sunday” and our Veterans stand on “Armistice Day” and women lead worship when we celebrate the “Gifts of Women Sunday.” We focus on our Cuba Partnership when Pastor Daniel Izquierdo is in town. We give money and attention to our Raindrop agency, which differs year to year.
In these days when we are pondering racial disparity in our country and reaching to better live our creed and our national aspirations, it is appropriate to say “Black Lives Matter.”
If we can’t say these words, then, I daresay, no life matters.
News:
Cheryl Kelton Bourguignon was Bev Kelton’s daughter. Her graveside was Saturday.
Cheryl was stuck in a body crippled by MS. But family says that her spirit transcended her body. Speech, mobility, higher-level decision making became compromised when she was in her late twenties. But she always loved people, and she had a way of showing it. She wanted to a part of things. She liked being at the center.
Prior to MS: Cheryl was the athletic one, a cheerleader, interested and proficient at language. Cheryl liked to travel. The world wasn’t big enough for Cheryl. She was vivacious. She was vibrant.
She was a good mom. She loved her boys, Nick and Mike. In these later decades, the family had to work together to help care for her. It was time and energy well spent. The family is richer for it.
Cheryl didn’t rail against MS. She lived into it. She was disabled by it, yes, but she was not defined by it. Cheryl was Cheryl, a child of God, the apple of God’s eye.
The family appreciates your prayers.
Tuesday Men’s Bible Study 8 am
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Humor: (Serious times call for re-creation, joy, and humor.)
What has four wheels and flies?
A garbage truck.
GOOD WORD:
“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.
Amos 5:21-24
LET US PRAY:
Holy God,
bless us to be a blessing.
And help us reach beyond
our cocoons of safety
to a wide world,
which you love
and redeem.
AMEN
PEACE to you all,
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-07-24
Friday 24 July 2020
Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Dear Friends,
This passage from Amos 5:21 as translated by Eugene Peterson has really grabbed me this week. What have you read this week that has inspired you? Share it.
“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”
And Prayers of Steel from Sandburg always stirs me:
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.
* * *
On Sunday in worship, we who are tethered to the solid ground reach for the transcendent in song, prayer, and praise. Follow the links at FirstPres.Live and join us at 9:00 on Sunday.
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 correct guesses on last Friday’s photo of Rachel Matthews!
Here’s this week’s photo.
Visit http://fb.com/groups/
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@
* * *
Summer songs:
Knock on Wood!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Sing it, Sly!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
If you travel, take this along…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Thank you, Arturo O’Farrill!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-07-23
Thursday July 23, 2020
A daily e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Dear Friends,
Nathan Paul-Bonham took a wet corner too fast on his bicycle, crashed, fractured hip and pelvis, and contracted a bad case of road rash. He’s okay, but is just now feeling the bad pain that will only get worse before it gets better. (Nathan, if you’re reading this, take your meds and feel the love coming your way. Seriously.) His parents, as I write this, are coursing through Illinois. By the time you read this tomorrow, they’ll be leaving the Texas panhandle or thereabouts.
Nathan is a YAV—a Young Adult Volunteer for our church, the Presbyterian Church (USA)—serving in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This was to be his last week concluding a year of service to and with at-risk youth there.
Rachel and I and our sons love Nathan and his family. We met Scott and Donna almost 40 years ago at Union Seminary & the Presbyterian School of Christian Education. None of us had kids then, and we could not imagine how we would love each other’s kids and families.
Nathan is 6-feet 8-inches tall with his basketball shoes on, but he’s still our collective “little boy.” Join us in praying for him.
Sometime ministry is rushing through the night on a cross country drive. Sometimes it is a healing ministry of books-on-tape and slow walks around the house. Sometimes it is praying for strangers or feeding family. It’s preaching hope in the face of hopelessness, freedom in the face of quarantine, victory when the tide is decidedly not in your favor, resurrection around a hole and pile of fresh dug dirt.
Friends, pray for the Paul-Bonham family and the miles they have yet to drive. They have to make it back to St. Joseph, Michigan, after all, with a wounded son.
And let’s continue to be church together. “Being there” for one another. Caring. Reaching out. Challenging. Comforting. Taking seriously this ministry of presence during a season of separation.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Take on Race:
Interested in First Presbyterian Church becoming “multicultural”? It’s easier to talk about than to achieve. I would love it. But would the necessary changes be too tough on you? On me? Hum…. Here’s some food for thought from Beth Hutchens:
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/
News:
Wednesday Night Vespers was a special blessing last night. Thank you for the inspiration.
Friday
Men’s Prayer Group 8:30 am
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Friday Night Lights Bible Study 7:30 pm
Email zoom@firstpres.church for the link.
Humor: (Serious times call for re-creation, joy, and humor.)
We had dinner on the moon the other night. The food was good, but we didn’t like the atmosphere.
GOOD WORD:
Romans 8:26
… [T]he Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
LET US PRAY:
Peace between nations. Peace between neighbors. Peace between lovers. In love of the God of life. Peace between man and woman. Peace between parent and child. Peace between brother and sister. The peace of Christ above all peace. Bless, O Christ, my face. Let my face bless everything. Bless, O Christ, my eyes. Let my eyes bless all they see. Amen.
PEACE to you all,
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church