All Together Now
Children's sermon
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
The account of the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts opens with a seemingly unimportant detail -- “they were all together in one place.” But as team member Mary Austin points out in this installment of The Immediate Word, that was a vitally important part of the story... one that was a necessary precondition for the Spirit to demonstrate its unifying power. Likewise, Mary maintains, coming together in unity of purpose is something for us to strive for in our world today. She points out that we often see demonstrations of our common humanity in the wake of disasters both natural and man-made -- but asks us to consider if we abandon that mindset all too easily in our fractious everyday interactions... making it much more difficult for us to be open to the healing, unifying work of the Spirit. Instead, Mary notes, the Pentecost story calls us to show the same sort of togetherness that we see in the wake of crises in ordinary times as well... even in the midst of a dangerous world.
Team member Chris Keating shares some additional thoughts on the Acts text and the Holy Spirit’s amazing ability to bridge the divide of languages. And as Chris reminds us, there can be a great deal of misunderstanding and discord even among speakers of a common language. But while our diverse languages, and devotion to them, often promotes division, Chris points out that the power of the Spirit enables us to understand God’s call, no matter the language we speak -- especially when it disturbs us by moving us out of our comfort zones.
All Together Now
by Mary Austin
Acts 2:1-21
The followers of Jesus are all together in one place, waiting for the coming of the Spirit. They’re together physically, sharing space, but the story suggests an added layer of unity. They’re in one place because they share a common purpose, awaiting a promised gift. They’re united in a feeling of anticipation, sure that this gift of the Spirit will lead them into the future. People waiting for a new purpose after the death of Jesus will find it. Their next task will become clear. The doors will open to the work they need to do for Jesus.
Being all together, in a spiritual sense, is rare. That kind of unity can come from inspiration, or from desperation.
Following the bombing in Manchester, England, a spirit of shared compassion has emerged. Residents have rushed to offer aid to the victims and their families. In a circle of compassion, a man who is homeless helped bombing victims, and found himself being helped in return. Stephen Jones “is being hailed as a hero after he helped the wounded as they fled the scene. He told CNN, ‘Me and my mate we got up and we started running. We realized what had happened, we run back, and all the women and children were coming out with blood.’ ” Soon Jones was on the receiving end of the same kind of concern.
The response in Manchester gives us another view of what it’s like to be all together, in a shared spirit. But do we have to wait for a disaster to have that kind of common purpose?
In the Scriptures
The disciples are gathered -- all together -- awaiting what Jesus promised, but also to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot (Leviticus 21:15 and following). The festival is called several things in Jewish literature, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, including the Festival of Weeks, the Feast of Harvest, and the Day of the First Fruits. This was the final harvest festival, with wheat being the last crop to be harvested. The harvest season started with Passover, so this was a celebration at the end of the season. The festival also celebrated the giving of the Torah, and the Jewish Encyclopedia calls it “the birthday of Judaism.”
On this ancient holiday, the Holy Spirit makes herself known in a new way, in both sight and sound. Fire is an ancient sign of the presence of God, as Abraham discovered in a flaming torch and Moses found in a burning bush. In smoke and fire, God makes the divine self known at Sinai and in the wilderness. John the Baptist promises one who will baptize with fire. Fire can be a sign of anger, acceptance of a sacrifice, or presence. The tongues of fire touch each person individually, but are visible to all who are present.
The sound of the wind takes us back to the story of creation, and God’s spirit settling over the water until something new is born. Something new is being born here too. The evidence of the Spirit’s presence comes as these rough Galileans, fishermen and tradespeople, begin to speak in all the cosmopolitan languages of the world. They start out in one place, gathered in another upper room somewhere, but the sights and sounds must move them out into the street where people can hear them. If they stayed in that room, no one would ever have noticed them. Visitors and travelers from every place receive evidence of God’s power, as they hear it in the language of home. There are different languages, but one message; different dialects, but one Spirit.
In the News
After the bombing in Manchester, residents drew together to provide for the people touched by the attack. With #RoomforManchester, they took to social media to offer beds, meals, and rides. Posts said things like: “Spare bed, 2 sofas, tea & chargers for anyone stuck in Manchester tonight. Outside centre but can pick up/drive home #roomformanchester.” Taxi drivers offered free rides from the concert venue, and “a nearby Holiday Inn reportedly took in over 50 children, who were separated from their parents in the blast.”
The city’s “football clubs” have joined together to pledge one million pounds to the victims’ fund. Manchester City and Manchester United said: “The hope of both our clubs is that our donation will go some small way to alleviate the daunting challenges faced by those directly affected and that our acting together will serve as a symbol to the world of the unbreakable strength of the spirit of Manchester.”
As people work to plan funerals and recover physically, pop star Ariana Grande plans to return to Manchester for a benefit concert. The singer said: “I’ll be returning to the incredibly brave city of Manchester to spend time with my fans and to have a benefit concert in honor of and raise money for the victims and their families.” She added: “Our response to this violence must be to come closer together, to help each other, to love more, to sing louder, and to live more kindly and generously than we did before.”
People of Muslim faith in Manchester have also united to condemn the terror attack. “The Muslim Council of Britain called the Manchester attack ‘horrific’ and ‘criminal.’ Harun Khan, the Secretary General, said: ‘May the perpetrators face the full weight of justice both in this life and the next.’ ” Muslim residents hurried to participate in helping, and “dozens of Muslims in Manchester rushed to help those caught up in the attack. Muslim taxi drivers turned off their meters and offered free rides to people, Muslim NHS [National Health Service] workers worked throughout the night treating the injured, and Muslim locals offered up rooms for free.”
Stephen Jones, the homeless man who ran to aid the victims, summed up his motivation, saying: “We are human, we still have a heart, we still have that instinct to help people out that need help, and that’s what we are doing. And obviously when we are seeing children like that, with blood and, pulling nails out of their arms and stuff, and there were a couple in a girl’s face.... It was children, a lot of children with blood all over them, crying and screaming. If I didn’t help, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself for walking away and leaving kids like that.” Jones started a spiral of compassion. Inspired by his actions, “one woman set up an account on the charity fundraising site Just Giving, which has now raised close to $30,000. And on Tuesday, David Sullivan, joint-chairman of English Premier League club West Ham United, told the BBC he would like to help Jones further.... Sullivan, together with his son David Jr., tracked Jones down with the help of social media. The pair are now working out how to pay his rent for the next six months while supplying him with new clothes and work opportunities.” Generosity begets generosity when people share a common purpose.
In the Sermon
The sermon might look at:
* Fire means different things, and there is a difference between Moses at the burning bush and the people gathered for Pentecost, observes artist Lynn Miller, noting “the fires of the bush and Pentecost are not exactly the same. Or perhaps the fire is the same but the relationship between God and humans is not. Moses stood at a distance, warned from coming closer, watching this miracle of fire as he heard the voice of God. In the Pentecost story, this fire rests on each disciple individually. They are no longer spectators, they are partakers, sharers of the fire. The fire is not a spectacle to be observed but a part of who they now are.” The sermon might look at how we can join with others who have a common cause, or shared hopes, as we participate in God’s work.
* The story in Acts doesn’t describe how it happened, but the disciples must have rushed out of the room where they were waiting into the street so the crowd could see and hear them. The sermon might look at how the Holy Spirit moves us out of our contained spaces into the world. When the Spirit comes, how do we move out of the church into the community? How do we move out of hiding into the unfamiliar, or even hostile, world?
* Pentecost work can be dangerous work, as three train travelers in Portland, Oregon found when they tried to stand with two women being harassed on a train. Two were killed by the attacker, who was yelling anti-Muslim threats, and one is in the hospital after they came to the women’s defense. In Portland the community has come together, and “about 1,000 people gathered on Saturday night at a vigil to honor the men who intervened, according to The Oregonian. ‘They didn’t have capes,’ Ellie Eaton, a local activist, said at the event, according to the newspaper. ‘They were just human beings that we all have the capacity to be like.’ The Muslim Educational Trust, a local organization for the Muslim community, hosted a second vigil, followed by an interfaith dinner. Sadaf Assadi, a fourth-year dentistry student and one of the event’s organizers, said they had planned for 400 people but about 600 came.” Many of attendees told organizers that the city needs more events like that.
That story invites us to ponder how we follow the Spirit’s call to unity in a dangerous world. How do we stand together, and support one another, so that we can all be together in public spaces?
Disaster draws us together, and brings out the awareness of our common bonds. Dramatic events call out our best impulses, as we see what we share with other people after tragedy strips away our differences. The Pentecost story calls us to that kind of unity in ordinary times. The gift of the Spirit gives us our foundation, and invites us to move out into the world, speaking to people in ways they understand. Even on the most ordinary days, we can see beyond our different languages and different origins, and come back to a place where we are all together.
SECOND THOUGHTS
A Disturbing Trend
by Chris Keating
Acts 2:1-21
Before my wife and I were married, we faced a few significant hurdles. Like most couples, we had to decide who would pay the bills, whether we wanted children, where we would live, and so forth.
Those were the easy decisions. Since we were both in seminary, we were perpetually broke but also didn’t have many bills. So we just divided them evenly. As far as children were concerned, our student health insurance didn’t include maternity benefits. Case closed -- at least for a year or two. Getting into married student housing proved a tiny bit trickier. Yet even that wasn’t too hard.
The biggest hurdle was deciding what language would we speak. That became the true test of our premarital relationship.
It wasn’t that we didn’t speak English. Instead, we were separated by a common language. My wife was from Pennsylvania, and I was from California. If we were out for a date, she might suggest that we go get a hoagie “dahntahn.” If I countered that I would rather go down the street and get a sub sandwich, she would look at me as if I were nuts. When she came out to visit my family in California, she was amazed by the way Californians identified each freeway with precision: “Take the 10,” my mom told her. “No, get on the 210, and look for signs for the 605,” my father corrected.
Thankfully, we both called carbonated beverages “soda.” But then we moved from New Jersey to Colorado, where everyone called it “pop.”
Language unites, but it also divides. That is true throughout the world today, and it was certainly was an issue that Pentecost morning in Jerusalem when the Spirit raced through the streets, giving the gift of understanding to visitors from across the ancient world.
A search for linguistic common ground can be easily turned into a battleground, as evidenced by suspicions that immigrants who do not learn the mother tongue may not be loyal citizens or that eradicating native languages supports political unity. This is hardly a new issue for the United States, where diversity of language has created waves of angst for generations. A century ago, long before our contemporary debates over immigration, President Theodore Roosevelt warned that the United States was in danger of becoming a “polyglot boarding house.”
Today, Roosevelt’s house has grown into a large, multinational condominium complex.
Discussions about language are occurring throughout the world. In Israel, a move to define Hebrew as the national language has received criticism by Arab Israelis, who account for approximately 20 percent of the population. By custom, Israeli students are taught both Arabic and Hebrew, but a recent bill seeks to change that by naming Hebrew as the official language. The measure has received wide support from legislators. Proponents say the intent is to more clearly identify Israel as the Jewish homeland, but many Israeli Arabs fear its true motive is to further sideline their ethnic minority group.
In Northern Ireland, protests have renewed the push to pass an Irish Language Act. Thousands of activists demonstrated in Belfast recently, uniting in a call to protect Irish language services from planned budget cuts. It’s a contentious issue, which one politician compared to feeding a crocodile, but it is hardly unique to Northern Ireland. The drive toward national identity includes both Wales and Scotland, both of which have already passed similar language laws.
Back in the United States, the wrestling over bilingual education continues. Last November California passed a measure that ended English-only education in public schools, but it is unclear how those changes will be implemented. It remains a contentious issue, even as the nation increasingly becomes more multicultural.
The point remains that speaking one language does not necessarily lead to greater understanding. If anything, our current political and cultural tensions seem to indicate that Americans might as well be speaking differing tongues. Like parents and teenagers caught in endless battles over curfews and chores, we really seem to be speaking past each other more than with each other.
That was evident last week in Montana’s special congressional election. Just a day before winning Montana’s only seat in the House of Representatives, Republican Greg Gianforte was accused of assaulting journalist Ben Jacobs, breaking the reporter’s glasses and sending him crashing into the ground. Gianforte was angered by a question Jacobs had asked him. The incident has highlighted concerns that about the lack of civility in contemporary political discourse. The entire debacle was recorded by Jacobs.
Washington Post reporter James Hohmann called the incident an example of “a growing tribalism that contributes to the polarization of our political system.” It’s an indicator that we are losing our ability to understand each other.
Which is why the church needs to listen carefully to the way God reverses the experience of Babel on Pentecost. The Spirit blows into our towering structures of babble and ego-driven speech, opening new possibilities for understanding and empathy.
The sign of the Spirit’s arrival is the astonishing ability to understand -- even those with whom you are separated by barriers of language and culture. The miracle of that morning is that the Spirit enabled their understanding of each other. No wonder some couldn’t take it seriously.
It was an amazing and astonishing moment, so breathtaking that bystanders joked the disciples had been overindulging in the fruit of the vine. “Not so!” cries Peter, whose spiritual insights have been awakened by the Holy Spirit’s earth-rattling descent. As Luke reminds us, all of it was a fulfillment of the prophet of Joel. That stunning moment of understanding was evidence that God’s work was continuing.
The citizens who heard it were shaken. In the words of Pope Francis, it is time for the church to be disturbed once more. “Let yourself be disturbed by the Holy Spirit,” the pope said in a homily on May 29. He continued, “You must be able to feel the urge to go and to visit that sick person or change your life.”
Come, Holy Spirit. Come and disturb us once more. Come and amaze us with renewed hope for understanding. Now, about those Cappadocians...
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
Applications: In many different ways and in many different situations the Holy Spirit will guide in both what to say and what to do. The Holy Spirit is a common theme in all the lectionary readings for this Sunday.
David Letterman is this year’s recipient of the nation’s top comedy award, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Since becoming a nighttime television host in 1982, Letterman has had 6,000 episodes. Letterman began as a weather forecaster before becoming a comedian. He is being honored with the award not only for his silly gags, but also for interpreting serious social events through his monologues and interviews.
*****
The Syrian government is burning bodies to hide proof of mass killings. In the past four years the police have hanged more than 13,000 political prisoners. In the prison complex a crematorium was constructed to burn the bodies. Other bodies have been carried out by the truckloads to mass graves. Many humanitarian groups are speaking out about this atrocity.
*****
In the Ziggy comics, the main character (Ziggy) is a rather nondescript individual best known for his large nose. He is also known for always somewhat confused about what is going on around him and about events on a national scale. In one particular comic, Ziggy is standing in front of his television with his remote in his hand. He listens intently as the broadcaster says, “Stay tuned for ‘Action 5 News’ -- voted the least fake news in the tri-state area!”
*****
In a Peanuts comic strip, Lucy is jumping rope as Charlie Brown looks on. Charlie begins the conversation by saying, “It’s really a great that people are different.” Charlie then continues, “Wouldn’t it be terrible if everybody agreed on everything?” Lucy, stops jumping rope, turns, and asks, “Why?” Then Lucy continues, “If everybody agreed with me, they’d all be right!”
*****
Brad Pitt is staring the movie War Machine, which is being produced by Netflix. In the movie he plays a fictionalized version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the film explores the war in Afghanistan. Pitt said, regarding his decision to be a part of the film, “the impetus for me was a visit to Walter Reed [Hospital].” Realizing how the wounds of the soldiers have affected their lives and the lives of their families, Pitt wanted the movie to answer the question of why are these soldiers are being sent into battle. Pitt said, “It just really made me question who is spending this currency of dedication. Who’s writing the check? Who’s making the order?”
*****
In an interview promoting the movie War Machine, which is being produced by Netflix, Brad Pitt discussed his problem with alcohol that caused his divorce from Angelina Jolie. Pitt said, “I’ve got no secrets. I’ve got nothing to hide. We’re human and I find the human condition very interesting. If we’re not talking about it, then we’re not getting better.”
*****
Visitors to the new Volcano Bay water park in Orlando will wear “Tapu Tapu” wrist bands, eliminating the need for them to carry wallets and/or keys. The bands can be used by visitors as a key to their lockers, to pay for rides and meals, and to schedule a time for a ride and be altered when it is their turn, eliminating the need to stand in line. The band is designed to create a “frictionless” experience at the park.
*****
Vanessa Redgrave has spent six decades as an actress in front of the camera. Now, at the age of 80, she has made the decision to become a director. She is making a documentary titled Sea Sorrow about the migrant crisis. Redgrave is telling the story because, she says. “I think everybody, including myself, are in danger of losing our humanity.”
*****
Recently Pope Francis traveled to the Portuguese shrine in Fatima to recognize the 100th anniversary of the vision of the Virgin Mary by three little shepherd girls and the secrets they received. The pope is hopeful that the message of peace the girls reported during the height of World War I can be a message of peace that can be still heard today. In a prayer the pope asked everyone to follow in the footsteps of the shepherd girls and be instruments of peace. The pope prayed, “We will tear down all walls and cross every frontier, as we go out to every periphery, to make known God’s justice and peace.”
*****
The boyhood home of Mao is in Changsha, China -- a city that is suffering a conflict of religion, politics, ideology, and culture. The city has the largest statue of Mao in China, depicting him as a young adult with long, wavy hair. But in the same city, the Xingsha Church is being constructed. The church will be 260 feet tall, and topped by a giant cross. China, which now recognizes only a few religious organizations, is in conflict over a Christian church towering above the statue of Mao. Zhao Danyang wrote on the website Red Morality Think Tank, “Going for Christianity in a big way damages our nation’s ideological security.”
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From team member Dean Feldmeyer:
The Poisonwood Bible
“Tata Jesus is bangala!” Thus begins a sermon by missionary Nathan Price to his little congregation in the Congo in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible. But Nathan was so convinced that God was calling him to Africa, so anxious to get there as quickly as possible, that he did not bother to learn the language or the customs of the people. So he doesn’t realize that “bangala” can mean many things in the Congolese language, depending on how the speaker pronounces the word.
Nathan intends for it to mean “precious.” But the way he pronounces it, the word actually means poisonous and refers to a specific poisonous plant in that area.
Even after someone tries to explain the subtle nuances of the language to him, Nathan refuses to learn, so he continues to tell the people that Jesus will make their skin itch.
And he wonders why no one will allow him to baptize them.
*****
When Ads Go Bad
* When pronounced in Cantonese, Coca-Cola means “bite the wax tadpole.” By changing an accent here and there, however, Coca-Cola was able to find a phonetic equivalent which means “It makes the mouth happy.”
* When American fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken opened their first restaurant in Beijing in 1987, they accidentally translated KFC’s famous slogan “Finger-lickin’ good” to “We’ll Eat Your Fingers Off!” in Chinese.
* Auto giant Ford found that in Belgium, enticing customers with a dead body in every car isn’t the best way to make a sale. Hoping to highlight the cars’ excellent manufacturing, Ford launched an ad campaign in the European country that execs thought said “Every car has a high-quality body.” However, when translated, the slogan read “Every car has a high-quality corpse” -- far from the image they were hoping to invoke.
Sometimes, companies run into problems overseas not just for what they say, but how they say it. When Proctor & Gamble started selling its Pampers diapers in Japan, it used an image of a stork delivering a baby on the packaging. While the advertising may have worked in the U.S., it never caught on with Japanese moms and dads. After some research, the company figured out that customers were concerned and confused by the image of a stork on the packaging, since the stories of storks bringing babies to parents isn’t a part of Japanese folklore. There, the story goes that giant floating peaches bring babies to their parents.
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The Rabbit of Easter, He Bring the Chocolate
David Sedaris is an essayist, performance artist, storyteller, and naturally funny person. In his book Me Talk Pretty One Day, he tells of his French language class’s attempts to explain Easter to a Muslim woman who had never heard of it. Here’s an excerpt:
The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, “Excuse me, but what’s an Easter?”
Despite her having grown up in a Muslim country, it seemed she might have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. “I mean it,” she said. “I have no idea what you people are talking about.”
The teacher then called upon the rest of us to explain.
The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. “It is,” said one, “a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and...”
She faltered, and her fellow countryman came to her aid. “He call his self Jesus, and then he be die one day on two... morsels of... lumber.”
The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.
“He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father.”
“He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.”
“He nice, the Jesus. He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead
today.”
Part of the problem had to do with grammar. Simple nouns such as “cross” and “resurrection” were beyond our grasp, let alone such complicated reflexive phrases as “To give of yourself your only begotten son.” Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead.
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Losing Their Language
The Icelandic language, seen by many Icelanders as a source of identity and pride, is being undermined by the widespread use of English, both for mass tourism and in the voice-controlled artificial intelligence devices coming into vogue. Linguistics experts, studying the future of a language spoken by fewer than 400,000 people, wonder if this is the beginning of the end for the Icelandic tongue. Former President Vigdis Finnbogadottir told the Associated Press that unless Iceland takes steps to protect its language, “Icelandic will end in the Latin bin.” A number of factors combine to make the future of the language uncertain.
Tourism has exploded in recent years, becoming the country’s single biggest employer, and analysts at Arion Bank say one in two new jobs is being filled by foreign labor. That is increasing the use of English as a universal communicator and diminishing the role of Icelandic. The problem is compounded because many new computer devices are designed to recognize English but they do not understand Icelandic. It ranks among the weakest and least-supported languages in terms of digital technology -- along with Irish Gaelic, Latvian, Maltese, and Lithuanian -- according to a report by the Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance assessing 30 European languages. Iceland’s Ministry of Education estimates about $8.8 million is needed for seed funding for an open-access database to help tech developers adapt Icelandic as a language option.
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Learning Language Through Stories
Lindsay Does Languages is a website for people who love learning and/or teaching languages. Lindsay herself has taught language skills to individuals, small groups of tourists, and even large groups of business executives. In a blog post she talks about how storytelling is a perfect vehicle for teaching and learning a language. Why?
Familiarity: When things become familiar, we care about them more. Remember the coffee commercials that serialized the story of the guy and the woman from another apartment who borrowed some coffee from him? Will they get together? Will they like each other? All this happening through several different commercials spread out over a long time and over many cups of coffee, of course.
Interesting: Lindsay explains that, for her, “the most boring thing when learning a language is grammar drills. Not grammar books. Grammar books I love, but the drills. YAWN. Stories make language learning more interesting because they give us something else to think about. It’s like hiding peas in mashed potatoes to get your children to eat their veggies. A cunning disguise for something we don’t look forward to.”
Engaging: If something is familiar to us and interesting, then we’re going to find it more engaging. When we’re more engaged, we’re going to be enjoying ourselves more, and be more likely to associate that positive experience with what could be a negative one (for example, my grammar drills!).
Memorable: The old way of teaching language was to give the students a list of vocabulary words to memorize each week. Now we know that if we ask the students to use the list of words in a story they will remember them without all of that boring, awful, repetitive drilling.
*****
Eating Together
In a July 2014 article for the Atlantic, author Cody C. Delistraty talks at length about the benefits -- nutritional and psychological -- of eating together:
Sadly, Americans rarely eat together anymore. In fact, the average American eats one in every five meals in her car, one in four Americans eats at least one fast food meal every single day, and the majority of American families report eating a single meal together less than five days a week. It’s a pity that so many Americans are missing out on what could be meaningful time with their loved ones, but it’s even more than that. Not eating together also has quantifiably negative effects both physically and psychologically.
Using data from nearly three-quarters of the world’s countries, a new analysis from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that students who do not regularly eat with their parents are significantly more likely to be truant at school. The average truancy rate in the two weeks before the International Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test administered to 15-year-olds by the OECD and used in the analysis as a measure for absenteeism, was about 15 percent throughout the world on average, but it was nearly 30 percent when pupils reported they didn’t often share meals with their families.
Children who do not eat dinner with their parents at least twice a week also were 40 percent more likely to be overweight compared to those who do, as outlined in a research presentation given at the European Congress on Obesity in Bulgaria this May. On the contrary, children who do eat dinner with their parents five or more days a week have less trouble with drugs and alcohol, eat healthier, show better academic performance, and report being closer with their parents than children who eat dinner with their parents less often, according to a study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
He concludes the article:
In America, it seems snobbish to take time to eat good food with one’s family. The Norman Rockwell portrait of the family around the dinner table now seems less middle-class and more haute bourgeois, as many families can’t afford to have one parent stay home from work, spending his or her day cleaning and cooking a roast and side of potatoes for the spouse and kids. Most parents don’t have time to cook, many don’t even know how, and the idea that one should spend extra money and time picking up produce at the supermarket rather than grabbing a bucket of Chinese take-out can seem unfeasible, unnecessary, and slightly pretentious. It’s understandable to want to save time and money. It’s the same reason that small shops go out of business once Walmart moves into town; but in this case it is not the shop owner who suffers, it is the consumer of unhealthy and rushed meals.
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The High Cost of Loneliness
In a 2012 article in the New York Times, Judith Graham talks of the high price of loneliness on our health and general well-being:
Loneliness stings at any age. But in older people, it can have serious health consequences, raising the risks of an earlier-than-expected death and the loss of physical functioning, according to a study published [that year].
The report, in the Archives of Internal Medicine, is the largest yet to tease out the impact of loneliness on people in their later years. Geriatricians at the University of California, San Francisco, asked 1,604 adults age 60 and older how often they felt isolated or left out, or lacked companionship. The researchers were attempting to quantify the feeling of loneliness -- a sense of not having meaningful contact with others, accompanied by painful distress.
Answers were recorded in 2002 and every two years after through 2008. The number of older adults who reported feeling lonely -- just over 43 percent -- didn’t change significantly over that period, according to Dr. Carla Perissinotto, an assistant clinical professor at UCSF and the study’s lead author. About 13 percent of older adults said they were often lonely, while 30 percent said loneliness was sometimes an issue.
What did change over the six-year period was the health status of elderly men and women who felt isolated and unhappy. By 2008, 24.8 percent of seniors in this group reported declines in their ability to perform the so-called activities of daily living -- to bathe, dress, eat, toilet, and get up from a chair or a bed on their own. Among those free of loneliness, only 12.5 percent reported such declines.
Lonely older adults also were 45 percent more likely to die than seniors who felt meaningfully connected with others, even after results were adjusted for factors like depression, socioeconomic status, and existing health conditions.
The emphasis on meaningful connections goes to the heart of what loneliness is and is not. It is not the same thing as being alone: 62.5 percent of older adults who reported being lonely in this new study were married. Nor is it simply a paucity of social contacts. As has been observed many times, people can feel lonely even when surrounded by others if their interactions lack emotional depth and resonance.
Loneliness is about the way people experience relationships subjectively, not the number of relationships they have...
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: O God, how manifold are your works!
People: In wisdom you have made them all.
Leader: May the glory of God endure forever.
People: May God rejoice in the works of creation.
Leader: May my meditation be pleasing to God.
People: Bless God, O my soul. Praise God!
OR
Leader: Come and join in unity with our God.
People: We come together to invite God to dwell in us.
Leader: God comes to dwell in each of us and among us.
People: We join as God’s people so that God can be with us.
Leader: God’s Spirit unites us with God, with each other, and in mission.
People: Together in God’s Spirit, we will serve God’s world.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
“We Gather Together”
found in:
UMH: 131
H82: 433
PH: 559
NNBH: 326
NCH: 421
CH: 276
ELA: 449
W&P: 81
AMEC: 576
STLT: 349
“I Sing the Almighty Power of God”
found in:
UMH: 152
H82: 398
PH: 288
NCH: 12
W&P: 31
Renew: 54
“Breathe on Me, Breath of God”
found in:
UMH: 420
H82: 508
PH: 316
AAHH: 317
NNBH: 126
NCH: 292
CH: 254
LBW: 488
W&P: 461
AMEC: 192
“Of All the Spirit’s Gifts to Me”
found in:
UMH: 336
CH: 270
W&P: 401
“In Christ There Is No East or West”
found in:
UMH: 548
H82: 529
PH: 439, 440
AAHH: 398, 399
NNBH: 299
NCH: 394, 395
CH: 687
LBW: 259
ELA: 650
W&P: 600, 603
AMEC: 557
“Where Charity and Love Prevail”
found in:
UMH: 549
H82: 581
NCH: 396
LBW: 126
ELA: 359
“Like the Murmur of the Dove’s Song”
found in:
UMH: 544
H82: 513
PH: 314
NCH: 270
CH: 245
ELA: 403
W&P: 327
Renew: 280
“Spirit of God, Descend upon My Heart”
found in:
UMH: 500
PH: 326
AAHH: 312
NCH: 290
CH: 265
LBW: 486
ELA: 800
W&P: 132
AMEC: 189
“I Will Call upon the Lord”
found in:
CCB: 9
Renew: 15
“We Are One in Christ Jesus” (“Somos uno en Cristo”)
found in:
CCB: 43
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who dwells in unity as the Three in One: Grant us the grace to live in communion with you so that we may dwell in unity with one another; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, for you are the One who is Three. You created us to be in communion with you and in unity with one another. So fill us with your gracious Spirit that we may live as you created us to be. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially our wanting to be individual Christians more than we want to be the Church.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. From the beginning of creation, you made us to be in union with you and in community with one another. Yet we find ourselves more concerned about individual wants and needs, and less concerned about the community of faith. We want what suits us, and if others don’t like it they can go somewhere else. “Me first” seems to be our cry. Forgive us our self-centered ways, and draw us together in the power of your Spirit so that we might truly be your Church doing your work. Amen.
Leader: God does desire to be with us and among us. Receive the power of God’s Spirit to unite together as God’s people.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord’s Prayer)
Praise and glory are yours, O God, for you come to dwell in us and among us. Perfect in unity yourself, you desire to unite with us.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. From the beginning of creation, you made us to be in union with you and in community with one another. Yet we find ourselves more concerned about individual wants and needs, and less concerned about the community of faith. We want what suits us, and if others don’t like it they can go somewhere else. “Me first” seems to be our cry. Forgive us our self-centered ways, and draw us together in the power of your Spirit so that we might truly be your Church doing your work.
We thank you for the blessings you have so graciously bestowed upon us. We thank you for the Church and our place within it. We thank you that it has nurtured us and helped us grow as disciples of Jesus.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our need. We lift up to you those who are hurting, whether it be in body, mind, or spirit. We pray for those who find themselves separated from their communities because of famine, war, or other causes.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father . . . Amen.
(or if the Lord’s Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
Invite the children play a circle game with you, such as “Duck, Duck, Goose.” Then have them go to different places in the sanctuary to play. Of course, they can’t play the game if they aren’t together. Talk about how the disciples were all together on Pentecost. Then the Spirit of God came upon them and they shared the good news of Jesus. Just like those disciples, we gather together at church to receive the power to be Jesus’ disciples.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
All Together Now
by Beth Herrinton-Hodge
Acts 2:1-21
(Gather the children in a circle. Extend your hand, palm down, into the center of the circle. Have the children do the same, placing their hands on top of yours.)
On the count of three, everyone say “Break!” and lift your hands up toward the ceiling.
One. Two. Three. BREAK!
(Have everyone sit down in the circle.)
Sometimes people break a circle like we just did before they begin a sports competition -- like before a soccer game or at the beginning of a baseball game.
When have you seen or participated in a circle like this? (Allow time for the children to respond.)
Whenever I see this action, it seems to draw the team together -- it unites them -- and shows that they are working as one. It’s like a mini-celebration -- before their game or after their game.
I had us make the circle and break it this morning as a way to bring us together -- to show that we’re one in this circle, in this place.
Today is a special day in the Christian church -- it’s Pentecost, the birthday of the church! On Pentecost, many of Jesus’ friends gathered together to celebrate a Jewish harvest festival. While they were gathered, the Holy Spirit came to each person in the room “with tongues of fire.” Right then, Jesus’ friends felt changed -- excited and empowered to go and tell others about Jesus.
Jesus’ friends were united in that room. God’s Spirit came upon them and then sent them out. They left the room and went out into the streets talking about Jesus.
The people in Jerusalem, who saw and heard Jesus’ friends, thought they were a little strange because they were so excited -- rushing around and telling everyone about how great Jesus is.
But you know, if they hadn’t started telling everyone about Jesus, we might not have ever heard about him ourselves!
Jesus’ friends were united in that room. God’s Spirit came upon them and then sent them out. This is not too different from what we experience on Sundays -- we are united as we gather in our church; we hear and learn about God and Jesus. God’s Spirit empowers us to go out and tell others about Jesus, to go out and live the way Jesus taught us to live, to be God’s people in the world.
The Holy Spirit helps us do this.
Before we leave our circle now, let’s join our hands together like we did at the start of our talk this morning and pray. (Extend your hand into the center of the circle again. Have the children do the same, placing their hands on top of yours.)
Prayer: Great God, as your people, we celebrate you and your Holy Spirit inside this church today. Let your Spirit go with us as we go out and live and tell others about how great you are!
Everyone say it with me: One. Two. Three. BREAK!
Go and tell others about Jesus!
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, June 4, 2017, issue.
Copyright 2017 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
Team member Chris Keating shares some additional thoughts on the Acts text and the Holy Spirit’s amazing ability to bridge the divide of languages. And as Chris reminds us, there can be a great deal of misunderstanding and discord even among speakers of a common language. But while our diverse languages, and devotion to them, often promotes division, Chris points out that the power of the Spirit enables us to understand God’s call, no matter the language we speak -- especially when it disturbs us by moving us out of our comfort zones.
All Together Now
by Mary Austin
Acts 2:1-21
The followers of Jesus are all together in one place, waiting for the coming of the Spirit. They’re together physically, sharing space, but the story suggests an added layer of unity. They’re in one place because they share a common purpose, awaiting a promised gift. They’re united in a feeling of anticipation, sure that this gift of the Spirit will lead them into the future. People waiting for a new purpose after the death of Jesus will find it. Their next task will become clear. The doors will open to the work they need to do for Jesus.
Being all together, in a spiritual sense, is rare. That kind of unity can come from inspiration, or from desperation.
Following the bombing in Manchester, England, a spirit of shared compassion has emerged. Residents have rushed to offer aid to the victims and their families. In a circle of compassion, a man who is homeless helped bombing victims, and found himself being helped in return. Stephen Jones “is being hailed as a hero after he helped the wounded as they fled the scene. He told CNN, ‘Me and my mate we got up and we started running. We realized what had happened, we run back, and all the women and children were coming out with blood.’ ” Soon Jones was on the receiving end of the same kind of concern.
The response in Manchester gives us another view of what it’s like to be all together, in a shared spirit. But do we have to wait for a disaster to have that kind of common purpose?
In the Scriptures
The disciples are gathered -- all together -- awaiting what Jesus promised, but also to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot (Leviticus 21:15 and following). The festival is called several things in Jewish literature, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, including the Festival of Weeks, the Feast of Harvest, and the Day of the First Fruits. This was the final harvest festival, with wheat being the last crop to be harvested. The harvest season started with Passover, so this was a celebration at the end of the season. The festival also celebrated the giving of the Torah, and the Jewish Encyclopedia calls it “the birthday of Judaism.”
On this ancient holiday, the Holy Spirit makes herself known in a new way, in both sight and sound. Fire is an ancient sign of the presence of God, as Abraham discovered in a flaming torch and Moses found in a burning bush. In smoke and fire, God makes the divine self known at Sinai and in the wilderness. John the Baptist promises one who will baptize with fire. Fire can be a sign of anger, acceptance of a sacrifice, or presence. The tongues of fire touch each person individually, but are visible to all who are present.
The sound of the wind takes us back to the story of creation, and God’s spirit settling over the water until something new is born. Something new is being born here too. The evidence of the Spirit’s presence comes as these rough Galileans, fishermen and tradespeople, begin to speak in all the cosmopolitan languages of the world. They start out in one place, gathered in another upper room somewhere, but the sights and sounds must move them out into the street where people can hear them. If they stayed in that room, no one would ever have noticed them. Visitors and travelers from every place receive evidence of God’s power, as they hear it in the language of home. There are different languages, but one message; different dialects, but one Spirit.
In the News
After the bombing in Manchester, residents drew together to provide for the people touched by the attack. With #RoomforManchester, they took to social media to offer beds, meals, and rides. Posts said things like: “Spare bed, 2 sofas, tea & chargers for anyone stuck in Manchester tonight. Outside centre but can pick up/drive home #roomformanchester.” Taxi drivers offered free rides from the concert venue, and “a nearby Holiday Inn reportedly took in over 50 children, who were separated from their parents in the blast.”
The city’s “football clubs” have joined together to pledge one million pounds to the victims’ fund. Manchester City and Manchester United said: “The hope of both our clubs is that our donation will go some small way to alleviate the daunting challenges faced by those directly affected and that our acting together will serve as a symbol to the world of the unbreakable strength of the spirit of Manchester.”
As people work to plan funerals and recover physically, pop star Ariana Grande plans to return to Manchester for a benefit concert. The singer said: “I’ll be returning to the incredibly brave city of Manchester to spend time with my fans and to have a benefit concert in honor of and raise money for the victims and their families.” She added: “Our response to this violence must be to come closer together, to help each other, to love more, to sing louder, and to live more kindly and generously than we did before.”
People of Muslim faith in Manchester have also united to condemn the terror attack. “The Muslim Council of Britain called the Manchester attack ‘horrific’ and ‘criminal.’ Harun Khan, the Secretary General, said: ‘May the perpetrators face the full weight of justice both in this life and the next.’ ” Muslim residents hurried to participate in helping, and “dozens of Muslims in Manchester rushed to help those caught up in the attack. Muslim taxi drivers turned off their meters and offered free rides to people, Muslim NHS [National Health Service] workers worked throughout the night treating the injured, and Muslim locals offered up rooms for free.”
Stephen Jones, the homeless man who ran to aid the victims, summed up his motivation, saying: “We are human, we still have a heart, we still have that instinct to help people out that need help, and that’s what we are doing. And obviously when we are seeing children like that, with blood and, pulling nails out of their arms and stuff, and there were a couple in a girl’s face.... It was children, a lot of children with blood all over them, crying and screaming. If I didn’t help, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself for walking away and leaving kids like that.” Jones started a spiral of compassion. Inspired by his actions, “one woman set up an account on the charity fundraising site Just Giving, which has now raised close to $30,000. And on Tuesday, David Sullivan, joint-chairman of English Premier League club West Ham United, told the BBC he would like to help Jones further.... Sullivan, together with his son David Jr., tracked Jones down with the help of social media. The pair are now working out how to pay his rent for the next six months while supplying him with new clothes and work opportunities.” Generosity begets generosity when people share a common purpose.
In the Sermon
The sermon might look at:
* Fire means different things, and there is a difference between Moses at the burning bush and the people gathered for Pentecost, observes artist Lynn Miller, noting “the fires of the bush and Pentecost are not exactly the same. Or perhaps the fire is the same but the relationship between God and humans is not. Moses stood at a distance, warned from coming closer, watching this miracle of fire as he heard the voice of God. In the Pentecost story, this fire rests on each disciple individually. They are no longer spectators, they are partakers, sharers of the fire. The fire is not a spectacle to be observed but a part of who they now are.” The sermon might look at how we can join with others who have a common cause, or shared hopes, as we participate in God’s work.
* The story in Acts doesn’t describe how it happened, but the disciples must have rushed out of the room where they were waiting into the street so the crowd could see and hear them. The sermon might look at how the Holy Spirit moves us out of our contained spaces into the world. When the Spirit comes, how do we move out of the church into the community? How do we move out of hiding into the unfamiliar, or even hostile, world?
* Pentecost work can be dangerous work, as three train travelers in Portland, Oregon found when they tried to stand with two women being harassed on a train. Two were killed by the attacker, who was yelling anti-Muslim threats, and one is in the hospital after they came to the women’s defense. In Portland the community has come together, and “about 1,000 people gathered on Saturday night at a vigil to honor the men who intervened, according to The Oregonian. ‘They didn’t have capes,’ Ellie Eaton, a local activist, said at the event, according to the newspaper. ‘They were just human beings that we all have the capacity to be like.’ The Muslim Educational Trust, a local organization for the Muslim community, hosted a second vigil, followed by an interfaith dinner. Sadaf Assadi, a fourth-year dentistry student and one of the event’s organizers, said they had planned for 400 people but about 600 came.” Many of attendees told organizers that the city needs more events like that.
That story invites us to ponder how we follow the Spirit’s call to unity in a dangerous world. How do we stand together, and support one another, so that we can all be together in public spaces?
Disaster draws us together, and brings out the awareness of our common bonds. Dramatic events call out our best impulses, as we see what we share with other people after tragedy strips away our differences. The Pentecost story calls us to that kind of unity in ordinary times. The gift of the Spirit gives us our foundation, and invites us to move out into the world, speaking to people in ways they understand. Even on the most ordinary days, we can see beyond our different languages and different origins, and come back to a place where we are all together.
SECOND THOUGHTS
A Disturbing Trend
by Chris Keating
Acts 2:1-21
Before my wife and I were married, we faced a few significant hurdles. Like most couples, we had to decide who would pay the bills, whether we wanted children, where we would live, and so forth.
Those were the easy decisions. Since we were both in seminary, we were perpetually broke but also didn’t have many bills. So we just divided them evenly. As far as children were concerned, our student health insurance didn’t include maternity benefits. Case closed -- at least for a year or two. Getting into married student housing proved a tiny bit trickier. Yet even that wasn’t too hard.
The biggest hurdle was deciding what language would we speak. That became the true test of our premarital relationship.
It wasn’t that we didn’t speak English. Instead, we were separated by a common language. My wife was from Pennsylvania, and I was from California. If we were out for a date, she might suggest that we go get a hoagie “dahntahn.” If I countered that I would rather go down the street and get a sub sandwich, she would look at me as if I were nuts. When she came out to visit my family in California, she was amazed by the way Californians identified each freeway with precision: “Take the 10,” my mom told her. “No, get on the 210, and look for signs for the 605,” my father corrected.
Thankfully, we both called carbonated beverages “soda.” But then we moved from New Jersey to Colorado, where everyone called it “pop.”
Language unites, but it also divides. That is true throughout the world today, and it was certainly was an issue that Pentecost morning in Jerusalem when the Spirit raced through the streets, giving the gift of understanding to visitors from across the ancient world.
A search for linguistic common ground can be easily turned into a battleground, as evidenced by suspicions that immigrants who do not learn the mother tongue may not be loyal citizens or that eradicating native languages supports political unity. This is hardly a new issue for the United States, where diversity of language has created waves of angst for generations. A century ago, long before our contemporary debates over immigration, President Theodore Roosevelt warned that the United States was in danger of becoming a “polyglot boarding house.”
Today, Roosevelt’s house has grown into a large, multinational condominium complex.
Discussions about language are occurring throughout the world. In Israel, a move to define Hebrew as the national language has received criticism by Arab Israelis, who account for approximately 20 percent of the population. By custom, Israeli students are taught both Arabic and Hebrew, but a recent bill seeks to change that by naming Hebrew as the official language. The measure has received wide support from legislators. Proponents say the intent is to more clearly identify Israel as the Jewish homeland, but many Israeli Arabs fear its true motive is to further sideline their ethnic minority group.
In Northern Ireland, protests have renewed the push to pass an Irish Language Act. Thousands of activists demonstrated in Belfast recently, uniting in a call to protect Irish language services from planned budget cuts. It’s a contentious issue, which one politician compared to feeding a crocodile, but it is hardly unique to Northern Ireland. The drive toward national identity includes both Wales and Scotland, both of which have already passed similar language laws.
Back in the United States, the wrestling over bilingual education continues. Last November California passed a measure that ended English-only education in public schools, but it is unclear how those changes will be implemented. It remains a contentious issue, even as the nation increasingly becomes more multicultural.
The point remains that speaking one language does not necessarily lead to greater understanding. If anything, our current political and cultural tensions seem to indicate that Americans might as well be speaking differing tongues. Like parents and teenagers caught in endless battles over curfews and chores, we really seem to be speaking past each other more than with each other.
That was evident last week in Montana’s special congressional election. Just a day before winning Montana’s only seat in the House of Representatives, Republican Greg Gianforte was accused of assaulting journalist Ben Jacobs, breaking the reporter’s glasses and sending him crashing into the ground. Gianforte was angered by a question Jacobs had asked him. The incident has highlighted concerns that about the lack of civility in contemporary political discourse. The entire debacle was recorded by Jacobs.
Washington Post reporter James Hohmann called the incident an example of “a growing tribalism that contributes to the polarization of our political system.” It’s an indicator that we are losing our ability to understand each other.
Which is why the church needs to listen carefully to the way God reverses the experience of Babel on Pentecost. The Spirit blows into our towering structures of babble and ego-driven speech, opening new possibilities for understanding and empathy.
The sign of the Spirit’s arrival is the astonishing ability to understand -- even those with whom you are separated by barriers of language and culture. The miracle of that morning is that the Spirit enabled their understanding of each other. No wonder some couldn’t take it seriously.
It was an amazing and astonishing moment, so breathtaking that bystanders joked the disciples had been overindulging in the fruit of the vine. “Not so!” cries Peter, whose spiritual insights have been awakened by the Holy Spirit’s earth-rattling descent. As Luke reminds us, all of it was a fulfillment of the prophet of Joel. That stunning moment of understanding was evidence that God’s work was continuing.
The citizens who heard it were shaken. In the words of Pope Francis, it is time for the church to be disturbed once more. “Let yourself be disturbed by the Holy Spirit,” the pope said in a homily on May 29. He continued, “You must be able to feel the urge to go and to visit that sick person or change your life.”
Come, Holy Spirit. Come and disturb us once more. Come and amaze us with renewed hope for understanding. Now, about those Cappadocians...
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
Applications: In many different ways and in many different situations the Holy Spirit will guide in both what to say and what to do. The Holy Spirit is a common theme in all the lectionary readings for this Sunday.
David Letterman is this year’s recipient of the nation’s top comedy award, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Since becoming a nighttime television host in 1982, Letterman has had 6,000 episodes. Letterman began as a weather forecaster before becoming a comedian. He is being honored with the award not only for his silly gags, but also for interpreting serious social events through his monologues and interviews.
*****
The Syrian government is burning bodies to hide proof of mass killings. In the past four years the police have hanged more than 13,000 political prisoners. In the prison complex a crematorium was constructed to burn the bodies. Other bodies have been carried out by the truckloads to mass graves. Many humanitarian groups are speaking out about this atrocity.
*****
In the Ziggy comics, the main character (Ziggy) is a rather nondescript individual best known for his large nose. He is also known for always somewhat confused about what is going on around him and about events on a national scale. In one particular comic, Ziggy is standing in front of his television with his remote in his hand. He listens intently as the broadcaster says, “Stay tuned for ‘Action 5 News’ -- voted the least fake news in the tri-state area!”
*****
In a Peanuts comic strip, Lucy is jumping rope as Charlie Brown looks on. Charlie begins the conversation by saying, “It’s really a great that people are different.” Charlie then continues, “Wouldn’t it be terrible if everybody agreed on everything?” Lucy, stops jumping rope, turns, and asks, “Why?” Then Lucy continues, “If everybody agreed with me, they’d all be right!”
*****
Brad Pitt is staring the movie War Machine, which is being produced by Netflix. In the movie he plays a fictionalized version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the film explores the war in Afghanistan. Pitt said, regarding his decision to be a part of the film, “the impetus for me was a visit to Walter Reed [Hospital].” Realizing how the wounds of the soldiers have affected their lives and the lives of their families, Pitt wanted the movie to answer the question of why are these soldiers are being sent into battle. Pitt said, “It just really made me question who is spending this currency of dedication. Who’s writing the check? Who’s making the order?”
*****
In an interview promoting the movie War Machine, which is being produced by Netflix, Brad Pitt discussed his problem with alcohol that caused his divorce from Angelina Jolie. Pitt said, “I’ve got no secrets. I’ve got nothing to hide. We’re human and I find the human condition very interesting. If we’re not talking about it, then we’re not getting better.”
*****
Visitors to the new Volcano Bay water park in Orlando will wear “Tapu Tapu” wrist bands, eliminating the need for them to carry wallets and/or keys. The bands can be used by visitors as a key to their lockers, to pay for rides and meals, and to schedule a time for a ride and be altered when it is their turn, eliminating the need to stand in line. The band is designed to create a “frictionless” experience at the park.
*****
Vanessa Redgrave has spent six decades as an actress in front of the camera. Now, at the age of 80, she has made the decision to become a director. She is making a documentary titled Sea Sorrow about the migrant crisis. Redgrave is telling the story because, she says. “I think everybody, including myself, are in danger of losing our humanity.”
*****
Recently Pope Francis traveled to the Portuguese shrine in Fatima to recognize the 100th anniversary of the vision of the Virgin Mary by three little shepherd girls and the secrets they received. The pope is hopeful that the message of peace the girls reported during the height of World War I can be a message of peace that can be still heard today. In a prayer the pope asked everyone to follow in the footsteps of the shepherd girls and be instruments of peace. The pope prayed, “We will tear down all walls and cross every frontier, as we go out to every periphery, to make known God’s justice and peace.”
*****
The boyhood home of Mao is in Changsha, China -- a city that is suffering a conflict of religion, politics, ideology, and culture. The city has the largest statue of Mao in China, depicting him as a young adult with long, wavy hair. But in the same city, the Xingsha Church is being constructed. The church will be 260 feet tall, and topped by a giant cross. China, which now recognizes only a few religious organizations, is in conflict over a Christian church towering above the statue of Mao. Zhao Danyang wrote on the website Red Morality Think Tank, “Going for Christianity in a big way damages our nation’s ideological security.”
***************
From team member Dean Feldmeyer:
The Poisonwood Bible
“Tata Jesus is bangala!” Thus begins a sermon by missionary Nathan Price to his little congregation in the Congo in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible. But Nathan was so convinced that God was calling him to Africa, so anxious to get there as quickly as possible, that he did not bother to learn the language or the customs of the people. So he doesn’t realize that “bangala” can mean many things in the Congolese language, depending on how the speaker pronounces the word.
Nathan intends for it to mean “precious.” But the way he pronounces it, the word actually means poisonous and refers to a specific poisonous plant in that area.
Even after someone tries to explain the subtle nuances of the language to him, Nathan refuses to learn, so he continues to tell the people that Jesus will make their skin itch.
And he wonders why no one will allow him to baptize them.
*****
When Ads Go Bad
* When pronounced in Cantonese, Coca-Cola means “bite the wax tadpole.” By changing an accent here and there, however, Coca-Cola was able to find a phonetic equivalent which means “It makes the mouth happy.”
* When American fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken opened their first restaurant in Beijing in 1987, they accidentally translated KFC’s famous slogan “Finger-lickin’ good” to “We’ll Eat Your Fingers Off!” in Chinese.
* Auto giant Ford found that in Belgium, enticing customers with a dead body in every car isn’t the best way to make a sale. Hoping to highlight the cars’ excellent manufacturing, Ford launched an ad campaign in the European country that execs thought said “Every car has a high-quality body.” However, when translated, the slogan read “Every car has a high-quality corpse” -- far from the image they were hoping to invoke.
Sometimes, companies run into problems overseas not just for what they say, but how they say it. When Proctor & Gamble started selling its Pampers diapers in Japan, it used an image of a stork delivering a baby on the packaging. While the advertising may have worked in the U.S., it never caught on with Japanese moms and dads. After some research, the company figured out that customers were concerned and confused by the image of a stork on the packaging, since the stories of storks bringing babies to parents isn’t a part of Japanese folklore. There, the story goes that giant floating peaches bring babies to their parents.
*****
The Rabbit of Easter, He Bring the Chocolate
David Sedaris is an essayist, performance artist, storyteller, and naturally funny person. In his book Me Talk Pretty One Day, he tells of his French language class’s attempts to explain Easter to a Muslim woman who had never heard of it. Here’s an excerpt:
The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, “Excuse me, but what’s an Easter?”
Despite her having grown up in a Muslim country, it seemed she might have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. “I mean it,” she said. “I have no idea what you people are talking about.”
The teacher then called upon the rest of us to explain.
The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. “It is,” said one, “a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and...”
She faltered, and her fellow countryman came to her aid. “He call his self Jesus, and then he be die one day on two... morsels of... lumber.”
The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.
“He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father.”
“He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.”
“He nice, the Jesus. He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead
today.”
Part of the problem had to do with grammar. Simple nouns such as “cross” and “resurrection” were beyond our grasp, let alone such complicated reflexive phrases as “To give of yourself your only begotten son.” Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead.
*****
Losing Their Language
The Icelandic language, seen by many Icelanders as a source of identity and pride, is being undermined by the widespread use of English, both for mass tourism and in the voice-controlled artificial intelligence devices coming into vogue. Linguistics experts, studying the future of a language spoken by fewer than 400,000 people, wonder if this is the beginning of the end for the Icelandic tongue. Former President Vigdis Finnbogadottir told the Associated Press that unless Iceland takes steps to protect its language, “Icelandic will end in the Latin bin.” A number of factors combine to make the future of the language uncertain.
Tourism has exploded in recent years, becoming the country’s single biggest employer, and analysts at Arion Bank say one in two new jobs is being filled by foreign labor. That is increasing the use of English as a universal communicator and diminishing the role of Icelandic. The problem is compounded because many new computer devices are designed to recognize English but they do not understand Icelandic. It ranks among the weakest and least-supported languages in terms of digital technology -- along with Irish Gaelic, Latvian, Maltese, and Lithuanian -- according to a report by the Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance assessing 30 European languages. Iceland’s Ministry of Education estimates about $8.8 million is needed for seed funding for an open-access database to help tech developers adapt Icelandic as a language option.
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Learning Language Through Stories
Lindsay Does Languages is a website for people who love learning and/or teaching languages. Lindsay herself has taught language skills to individuals, small groups of tourists, and even large groups of business executives. In a blog post she talks about how storytelling is a perfect vehicle for teaching and learning a language. Why?
Familiarity: When things become familiar, we care about them more. Remember the coffee commercials that serialized the story of the guy and the woman from another apartment who borrowed some coffee from him? Will they get together? Will they like each other? All this happening through several different commercials spread out over a long time and over many cups of coffee, of course.
Interesting: Lindsay explains that, for her, “the most boring thing when learning a language is grammar drills. Not grammar books. Grammar books I love, but the drills. YAWN. Stories make language learning more interesting because they give us something else to think about. It’s like hiding peas in mashed potatoes to get your children to eat their veggies. A cunning disguise for something we don’t look forward to.”
Engaging: If something is familiar to us and interesting, then we’re going to find it more engaging. When we’re more engaged, we’re going to be enjoying ourselves more, and be more likely to associate that positive experience with what could be a negative one (for example, my grammar drills!).
Memorable: The old way of teaching language was to give the students a list of vocabulary words to memorize each week. Now we know that if we ask the students to use the list of words in a story they will remember them without all of that boring, awful, repetitive drilling.
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Eating Together
In a July 2014 article for the Atlantic, author Cody C. Delistraty talks at length about the benefits -- nutritional and psychological -- of eating together:
Sadly, Americans rarely eat together anymore. In fact, the average American eats one in every five meals in her car, one in four Americans eats at least one fast food meal every single day, and the majority of American families report eating a single meal together less than five days a week. It’s a pity that so many Americans are missing out on what could be meaningful time with their loved ones, but it’s even more than that. Not eating together also has quantifiably negative effects both physically and psychologically.
Using data from nearly three-quarters of the world’s countries, a new analysis from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that students who do not regularly eat with their parents are significantly more likely to be truant at school. The average truancy rate in the two weeks before the International Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test administered to 15-year-olds by the OECD and used in the analysis as a measure for absenteeism, was about 15 percent throughout the world on average, but it was nearly 30 percent when pupils reported they didn’t often share meals with their families.
Children who do not eat dinner with their parents at least twice a week also were 40 percent more likely to be overweight compared to those who do, as outlined in a research presentation given at the European Congress on Obesity in Bulgaria this May. On the contrary, children who do eat dinner with their parents five or more days a week have less trouble with drugs and alcohol, eat healthier, show better academic performance, and report being closer with their parents than children who eat dinner with their parents less often, according to a study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
He concludes the article:
In America, it seems snobbish to take time to eat good food with one’s family. The Norman Rockwell portrait of the family around the dinner table now seems less middle-class and more haute bourgeois, as many families can’t afford to have one parent stay home from work, spending his or her day cleaning and cooking a roast and side of potatoes for the spouse and kids. Most parents don’t have time to cook, many don’t even know how, and the idea that one should spend extra money and time picking up produce at the supermarket rather than grabbing a bucket of Chinese take-out can seem unfeasible, unnecessary, and slightly pretentious. It’s understandable to want to save time and money. It’s the same reason that small shops go out of business once Walmart moves into town; but in this case it is not the shop owner who suffers, it is the consumer of unhealthy and rushed meals.
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The High Cost of Loneliness
In a 2012 article in the New York Times, Judith Graham talks of the high price of loneliness on our health and general well-being:
Loneliness stings at any age. But in older people, it can have serious health consequences, raising the risks of an earlier-than-expected death and the loss of physical functioning, according to a study published [that year].
The report, in the Archives of Internal Medicine, is the largest yet to tease out the impact of loneliness on people in their later years. Geriatricians at the University of California, San Francisco, asked 1,604 adults age 60 and older how often they felt isolated or left out, or lacked companionship. The researchers were attempting to quantify the feeling of loneliness -- a sense of not having meaningful contact with others, accompanied by painful distress.
Answers were recorded in 2002 and every two years after through 2008. The number of older adults who reported feeling lonely -- just over 43 percent -- didn’t change significantly over that period, according to Dr. Carla Perissinotto, an assistant clinical professor at UCSF and the study’s lead author. About 13 percent of older adults said they were often lonely, while 30 percent said loneliness was sometimes an issue.
What did change over the six-year period was the health status of elderly men and women who felt isolated and unhappy. By 2008, 24.8 percent of seniors in this group reported declines in their ability to perform the so-called activities of daily living -- to bathe, dress, eat, toilet, and get up from a chair or a bed on their own. Among those free of loneliness, only 12.5 percent reported such declines.
Lonely older adults also were 45 percent more likely to die than seniors who felt meaningfully connected with others, even after results were adjusted for factors like depression, socioeconomic status, and existing health conditions.
The emphasis on meaningful connections goes to the heart of what loneliness is and is not. It is not the same thing as being alone: 62.5 percent of older adults who reported being lonely in this new study were married. Nor is it simply a paucity of social contacts. As has been observed many times, people can feel lonely even when surrounded by others if their interactions lack emotional depth and resonance.
Loneliness is about the way people experience relationships subjectively, not the number of relationships they have...
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: O God, how manifold are your works!
People: In wisdom you have made them all.
Leader: May the glory of God endure forever.
People: May God rejoice in the works of creation.
Leader: May my meditation be pleasing to God.
People: Bless God, O my soul. Praise God!
OR
Leader: Come and join in unity with our God.
People: We come together to invite God to dwell in us.
Leader: God comes to dwell in each of us and among us.
People: We join as God’s people so that God can be with us.
Leader: God’s Spirit unites us with God, with each other, and in mission.
People: Together in God’s Spirit, we will serve God’s world.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
“We Gather Together”
found in:
UMH: 131
H82: 433
PH: 559
NNBH: 326
NCH: 421
CH: 276
ELA: 449
W&P: 81
AMEC: 576
STLT: 349
“I Sing the Almighty Power of God”
found in:
UMH: 152
H82: 398
PH: 288
NCH: 12
W&P: 31
Renew: 54
“Breathe on Me, Breath of God”
found in:
UMH: 420
H82: 508
PH: 316
AAHH: 317
NNBH: 126
NCH: 292
CH: 254
LBW: 488
W&P: 461
AMEC: 192
“Of All the Spirit’s Gifts to Me”
found in:
UMH: 336
CH: 270
W&P: 401
“In Christ There Is No East or West”
found in:
UMH: 548
H82: 529
PH: 439, 440
AAHH: 398, 399
NNBH: 299
NCH: 394, 395
CH: 687
LBW: 259
ELA: 650
W&P: 600, 603
AMEC: 557
“Where Charity and Love Prevail”
found in:
UMH: 549
H82: 581
NCH: 396
LBW: 126
ELA: 359
“Like the Murmur of the Dove’s Song”
found in:
UMH: 544
H82: 513
PH: 314
NCH: 270
CH: 245
ELA: 403
W&P: 327
Renew: 280
“Spirit of God, Descend upon My Heart”
found in:
UMH: 500
PH: 326
AAHH: 312
NCH: 290
CH: 265
LBW: 486
ELA: 800
W&P: 132
AMEC: 189
“I Will Call upon the Lord”
found in:
CCB: 9
Renew: 15
“We Are One in Christ Jesus” (“Somos uno en Cristo”)
found in:
CCB: 43
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who dwells in unity as the Three in One: Grant us the grace to live in communion with you so that we may dwell in unity with one another; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, for you are the One who is Three. You created us to be in communion with you and in unity with one another. So fill us with your gracious Spirit that we may live as you created us to be. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially our wanting to be individual Christians more than we want to be the Church.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. From the beginning of creation, you made us to be in union with you and in community with one another. Yet we find ourselves more concerned about individual wants and needs, and less concerned about the community of faith. We want what suits us, and if others don’t like it they can go somewhere else. “Me first” seems to be our cry. Forgive us our self-centered ways, and draw us together in the power of your Spirit so that we might truly be your Church doing your work. Amen.
Leader: God does desire to be with us and among us. Receive the power of God’s Spirit to unite together as God’s people.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord’s Prayer)
Praise and glory are yours, O God, for you come to dwell in us and among us. Perfect in unity yourself, you desire to unite with us.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. From the beginning of creation, you made us to be in union with you and in community with one another. Yet we find ourselves more concerned about individual wants and needs, and less concerned about the community of faith. We want what suits us, and if others don’t like it they can go somewhere else. “Me first” seems to be our cry. Forgive us our self-centered ways, and draw us together in the power of your Spirit so that we might truly be your Church doing your work.
We thank you for the blessings you have so graciously bestowed upon us. We thank you for the Church and our place within it. We thank you that it has nurtured us and helped us grow as disciples of Jesus.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our need. We lift up to you those who are hurting, whether it be in body, mind, or spirit. We pray for those who find themselves separated from their communities because of famine, war, or other causes.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father . . . Amen.
(or if the Lord’s Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
Invite the children play a circle game with you, such as “Duck, Duck, Goose.” Then have them go to different places in the sanctuary to play. Of course, they can’t play the game if they aren’t together. Talk about how the disciples were all together on Pentecost. Then the Spirit of God came upon them and they shared the good news of Jesus. Just like those disciples, we gather together at church to receive the power to be Jesus’ disciples.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
All Together Now
by Beth Herrinton-Hodge
Acts 2:1-21
(Gather the children in a circle. Extend your hand, palm down, into the center of the circle. Have the children do the same, placing their hands on top of yours.)
On the count of three, everyone say “Break!” and lift your hands up toward the ceiling.
One. Two. Three. BREAK!
(Have everyone sit down in the circle.)
Sometimes people break a circle like we just did before they begin a sports competition -- like before a soccer game or at the beginning of a baseball game.
When have you seen or participated in a circle like this? (Allow time for the children to respond.)
Whenever I see this action, it seems to draw the team together -- it unites them -- and shows that they are working as one. It’s like a mini-celebration -- before their game or after their game.
I had us make the circle and break it this morning as a way to bring us together -- to show that we’re one in this circle, in this place.
Today is a special day in the Christian church -- it’s Pentecost, the birthday of the church! On Pentecost, many of Jesus’ friends gathered together to celebrate a Jewish harvest festival. While they were gathered, the Holy Spirit came to each person in the room “with tongues of fire.” Right then, Jesus’ friends felt changed -- excited and empowered to go and tell others about Jesus.
Jesus’ friends were united in that room. God’s Spirit came upon them and then sent them out. They left the room and went out into the streets talking about Jesus.
The people in Jerusalem, who saw and heard Jesus’ friends, thought they were a little strange because they were so excited -- rushing around and telling everyone about how great Jesus is.
But you know, if they hadn’t started telling everyone about Jesus, we might not have ever heard about him ourselves!
Jesus’ friends were united in that room. God’s Spirit came upon them and then sent them out. This is not too different from what we experience on Sundays -- we are united as we gather in our church; we hear and learn about God and Jesus. God’s Spirit empowers us to go out and tell others about Jesus, to go out and live the way Jesus taught us to live, to be God’s people in the world.
The Holy Spirit helps us do this.
Before we leave our circle now, let’s join our hands together like we did at the start of our talk this morning and pray. (Extend your hand into the center of the circle again. Have the children do the same, placing their hands on top of yours.)
Prayer: Great God, as your people, we celebrate you and your Holy Spirit inside this church today. Let your Spirit go with us as we go out and live and tell others about how great you are!
Everyone say it with me: One. Two. Three. BREAK!
Go and tell others about Jesus!
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The Immediate Word, June 4, 2017, issue.
Copyright 2017 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
