The Hard Work of the Spirit
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
For May 2, 2021:
The Hard Work of the Spirit
by Bethany Peerbolte
Acts 8:26-40
In the Scripture
Acts is the story of what happens once the Holy Spirit takes over the reins of the Jesus movement. The first recorded movements of the Spirit give us a clear picture as to what, or who, the Spirit prioritizes. The first thing that happens is the apostles receive the gift of speaking in every language. A good sign that the Spirit wants to take the gospel to every corner of humanity. A little later we see this conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch. In this case the Spirit chooses a person who identifies outside the majority in race, religion, and sexuality. This is an incredible neon flashing arrow pointing out who God wants included in the new covenant Jesus initiated.
At the time scripture was written, the word “eunuch” was used to describe many different sexually diverse groups. If someone was born with unidentifiable, or both female and male genitalia they would be labeled as a eunuch. Additionally, anyone who had severe damage to their genitals in their lifetime would be included in this grouping of people. It was also a common practice among royal households to force castration onto male slaves who served in female spaces. This was less about protecting the women in those spaces and more about wanting to be sure any children born were purely of the husband’s bloodline.
The eunuch Phillip meets seems to be a case of the later. Scripture says this eunuch served a queen in an official capacity. Whether they were born a eunuch and went into the work for the benefit of their birth status or were forcibly made a eunuch we do not know. Either way they have made the best of their status and risen to an important place within the queen’s house. They are so well situated they have the freedom to travel to Jerusalem to worship.
Since they are reading Isaiah and in Jerusalem to worship, we can be fairly sure they follow some denomination of Judaism. Probably one of more liberal practice since a strict reading of Levitical law would have excluded eunuchs from every aspect of worship. Some scholars have mused that they could have been born Jewish and a eunuch and fell into slavery in royal households because the cultural system did not provide better work options for a eunuch.
The Spirit and the eunuch are leading this meeting. Phillip is told where to go and who to go to. When the work, the baptism, was done, the Spirit whisks Phillip away to the next bit of work. This is not an apostle with a wild idea of including eunuchs and Ethiopians, it is the intention of the Spirit to include. The eunuch is the one who asks for help interpreting. They are the one who asks to be baptized. This is not an apostle evangelizing randomly and encouraging people to give themselves to Christ, it is the desire of the eunuch to learn and be baptized.
Philip is only a conduit through which the Spirit reaches out to the Ethiopian eunuch. All Phillip needs to do is follow, know his scripture, and listen to the desires of the eunuch to know God more fully.
In the News
The trend of division has continued in the United States. A lot of the accusations against the other side, whichever side that may be, is their unwillingness to join those affected by the policies they make and listen to their experiences.
Vice President Harris has found herself under attack for not going to the border and witnessing the human rights violations of which homeland security is being accused. The excuse being given for why Vice President Kamala Harris has not gone to the border is that she is working on the issue on a diplomatic level. She does have plans to travel to countries deemed the root of the immigration issue. Whether Covid is getting in the way of those plans or she is unwilling to move forward on the issue is being debated.
Either way those who want immigration reform and who see human rights violations happening are angry that they are not being heard. They feel like a visit will quickly make their case clear. The Vice President is being asked to join them at the border to listen to the experiences of immigrants with the hope that she will then effect change on the federal level.
The governor of Montana is also under fire for acting on abortion laws without first listening to the experiences of women. He signed three bills that would limit the availability of abortions in Montana. His opponents want him to understand the issue better and from the perspective of women before putting their lives at risk with these new laws.
The actions of men when it comes to the rights of women to make choices pertaining to their bodies is a long standing argument between pro-life and pro-choice camps. Those who want abortion to be available so that women can choose how to handle their pregnancies say men simply cannot understand the complexity of the choice and have no place limiting what they cannot understand. Making it worse, it seems lawmakers like the governor of Montana consistently refuse to hear another perspective and walk with women on this issue — choosing instead to make laws that women say are oppressive.
Bearing witness took front and center this month as the footage a 17 year old girl took of George Floyd’s murder became the center piece of the trial against Derek Chauvin. The prosecution depended heavily on that footage to show how early reports of the incident blatantly covered up the truth. The footage was key in convincing the jury to convict Chauvin on all three counts against him. This historic decision would not have been possible if that young woman walked away. Her choice to stand by led to the chance for accountability where there has been none in the past.
Holding the phone on George Floyd could not have been an easy task. I am sure she wished to have been anywhere else in that moment. Unfortunately, that was the moment she was called to and she followed the Spirit to her place. Holding the phone could not have felt like enough in the moment. She must have had nights where she wondered if she should have done more. For that moment it was the right thing to do though. Any more or any less would not have gotten us into the world where police officers are held responsible for their choices. There were other forces and people in control in the moment and her witness and presence was her calling.
In the Sermon
An overlooked detail of this conversion is the role of the Spirit. We applaud Phillip for putting himself out there. Praise him for knowing his scripture well enough to convince this stranger from another land that Jesus was worth following. The eunuch gets their moment of admiration for being willing to be baptized on the spot. Being so moved by the gospel they could not wait to join the new covenant family. Yet, the Spirit is hard at work here.
The Spirit is the one who guides Phillip. It tells him exactly where to be and who to join on their journey. The Spirit has been working behind the scenes for longer than we even get to see, putting the eunuch on his journey to Jerusalem so that the gospel could return with them to Ethiopia. When the Spirit works there are no coincidences either. There is a reason this person is chosen to interact with Phillip. They stand for a path of inclusion that no apostle could have thought of on their own. No matter the race, religion, sexuality, or gender, the gospel is a message that welcomes them. This story shows the direction in which the gospel is heading.
Phillip’s role in all of this is to be present. Before this encounter he has learned and studied the scripture. Not knowing who he would be called to teach, Phillip educated himself so he would be ready. He stayed open to the Spirit’s moving. He did not object to going on the wilderness road nor did he question the guidance to join a eunuch as they read scripture.
Phillip also never assumes he knows why the Spirit put him there. He relies on the questions of the eunuch to tell him what to do next. Even though Phillip is the more learned in the scripture he humbly asks “do you know what you are reading?” Only after the eunuch invited him to give his insight does Phillip unpack it.
This exchange of a humble teacher and an eager student reaps the brilliant reward of a heart changed. The eunuch asks if he can be baptized to which Phillip happily affirms the eunuch’s choice.
There has been a lot of controversy over churches proclaiming Black Lives Matter. While some are genuine concerns over the activity and leadership of the movement, many Christians show their lack of understanding of moments like this between a eunuch and an apostle. Phillip is the one with authority and power in scripture, yet he defers to the eunuch to lead the interaction. There are crowds of people Phillip could be preaching too, reaping hundreds of baptisms, but the Spirit called him to the side of this one person.
No matter how much we may think we know about life we should always remain humble enough to let the oppressed lead the conversation. Assuming we know what someone needs, even when it comes to an understanding of Jesus, will not give us the reward of a freed soul. Our jobs a Christians is to show up where the Spirit leads us and be present with the people the Spirit wants to reach. Listening to their story and their experiences and their understanding to find where we can be helpful is how we make the greatest impact.
SECOND THOUGHTS
If We Can Just Love Perfectly
by Tom Willadsen
Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8, Psalm 22:25-31
In the Scriptures
Acts 8:26-40 — here’s something I’d overlooked until this week: There’s a third character in this vignette, the chariot driver. Put yourself is his place. You’re driving this big shot home to Ethiopia from Jerusalem. He’s reading this holy book out loud but doesn’t understand it. A stranger flags you down. You stop the chariot. The stranger gets in and starts explaining the words from the holy book. Just as it starts to get interesting, the big shot in back tells you to stop the chariot next to a ditch with some dirty water in it. The big shot and the teacher go down into the water. The teacher says something you can’t hear, then the big shot gets back in the chariot. He’s elated; you’ve never seen him happier. But what happened to the other guy? Did he fall into the ditch and drown? Did he decide to stay there and enjoy a soothing mud treatment? Should you wait for him? No, no, just head for home, you’re told. So you do. But what a story to tell the people back in Ethiopia!
John 15:1-8 is part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples. There is not an obvious place in John 15 to end the reading. The theme of God being the vinedresser, that is, the one who cuts and disposes of branches that do not bear fruit, may have been especially important to the Christian community for whom John was writing for. This text proves one of the central tenets of Christian faith — that Jesus was divine. He said, “I am duh vine, youse guys are duh branches.” (The only thing that makes seminary humor memorable is that there was so little of it.) In this reading Jesus uses the verb “abide” (μενει in Greek). (There was an extended explanation of this term in the illustrations portion of The Immediate Word for April 25). John’s use of μενει foreshadows its frequent appearance in today’s epistle reading.
Psalm 22 is what Jesus began reciting on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Scholars tell us that Jesus was really citing the entire psalm on the cross, so even though he didn’t say the words, we should understand it as though he had recited the whole thing, which gets to redemption in the latter part of the psalm, the part included in today’s psalm reading.
1 John 4:7-21
God is love. God loves. We love because God loved us first; God started it! As the author of 1 John extolls love’s goodness, he also addresses the Gnostic presence that has appeared in the Christian community. Gnostics believe that one grows in faith through knowledge of God, rather than through experiencing and thus being able to express the love of God. To know God is to abide in God’s love. This is way more than mere knowledge that one is beloved by God. This love is a way of life; this love is life. One does not merely feel or know God’s love; one abides in God’s love. One is surrounded by it. God’s love, the author uses the Greek αγαπε (agape) repeatedly, must be experienced. As Rudolf Bultmann wrote, “Only he who is already loved can love, only he who has been trusted can trust….” [The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 12, Abingdon Press, 1957, p. 281]
In the News
The world breathed a collective sigh of relief on Tuesday, April 20, about 4 p.m. Central Time when the verdicts in the George Floyd murder case came back “guilty” on all three counts. The trial commanded media attention and was covered in minute detail not only by media outlets in the United States, but around the world. Major cities in the United States braced for civil unrest, and feared rioting, in the event that the jury had reached not guilty verdicts. Fox News personality Tucker Carlson speculated that the jury could not have returned a verdict other than guilty because they knew that to do otherwise would have sparked rioting, perhaps like the United States has never experienced before. I talked to people who held this opinion. They were convinced that George Floyd’s murderer could not have gotten a fair trial, with the jury aware of the magnitude of their decision. I am of the opinion that the jury did indeed vote their consciences and reached the right verdict — even with the knowledge of certain civil unrest hanging in the balance.
My worst fear was a not guilty verdict. My second worst fear was that a guilty verdict would spur celebrations in the streets that would then turn violent. While there were celebrations, they were restrained and dignified. There was some joy, but the overall emotion was relief and a sense that here was an occasion when the system had gotten it right. Country music polymath and modern-day theologian, Willie Nelson, famously expressed this sentiment when he sang “that would make one in a row.”
Was the verdict in the George Floyd murder case a turning point in American history? It is certainly exceptional that a white police officer was convicted of killing a Black man. It was also exceptional that police officers testified against one of their own. The blue wall of silence was breached, this time. Whether this is the beginning of a trend or the result of extremely powerful videos shot by bystanders, it is too soon to tell. There is some ambivalence around these verdicts. A terrific expression of this ambivalence as experienced and expressed by Blacks is in this clip from The Amber Ruffin Show. While host Amber Ruffin sings a parody of Etta James’s classic “At Last,” her sidekick, Tarik Davis points out that this is not a time to celebrate, there is still work to be done. Tellingly, Davis asks Ruffin “The next time you get stopped by the police, will you fear for your life?” Ruffin answers dejectedly “Yes.” Fear. Hold onto that word. Fear of the police has not gone away.
The other news story that has dominated the airwaves—and will not go away for a long, long time--the Covid-19 pandemic, has been producing increasingly good news recently. As of Sunday, April 25, some of the news is hopeful. More than 53% of Americans have received at least one dose of a vaccine. If you look at the map, however, you’ll find that the states with the lowest vaccination rates are in the South and the Mountain West, places where distrust of the federal government is highest. Conservative media has sown doubts about the validity of science and the efficacy of the three vaccines that are currently approved for use in the United States. The next steps we take in achieving herd immunity as a nation will require concerted effort to overcome vaccine reluctance. Fear of science, the government, and having our “rights” taken from us — forget about the common good — is impeding our recovery, the return to “normal” that we long for. Fear. There’s that word again.
In the Sermon
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” (1 John 4:18, NRSV)
Fear is all around us. Fear is a four-letter word. Nobody wants to talk about it, but Americans are afraid of each other. It is well-established that African Americans are afraid of the police, but we rarely hear about the fear that police officers feel. We all know that people make bad decisions when they are afraid. If nothing else, fear limits our ability to consider options. Fight, flight or freeze are the sum of the reptile brain’s repertoire of responses to fear.
It might appear that this gem of a verse tucked toward the end of the fourth chapter of 1 John may be the magic bullet that helps Americans get past our fear and live in peace and harmony. Perfect love casts out fear. That’s the ticket! If we can just love perfectly we won’t be afraid of each other anymore.
What often goes without saying, or acknowledging, when Americans talk about race is that white people are afraid of Black people. I can’t count the number of times in the past year I’ve heard people begin sentences saying, “I’m not racist, but...” This sentence is invariably followed by an observation about what “those people always do.” The fact is white people and Black people do not have much contact with one another and most white Americans can live their lives without ever being in a place or situation where they are not a strong majority. Law, custom and habit have conspired — and continue to conspire — to keep the races apart. In our estrangement from one another fear is a nearly inevitable reaction.
It is tempting to take the words from 1 John and proclaim that love is the antidote to fear. At one level that is true, but at a very deep level. For love to have that effect, we must love as deeply as God loves us. We are profoundly shallow when it comes to loving God.
Every time I end a phone conversation with my mother and my sons I say, “I love you.” It’s true and it reminds both of us of the bonds of love that unite us. Never have I said, “Mom, I abide in your love.” Or “Mom, you abide in my love.” The love that we find in 1 John is one that is experienced more than being known or felt. It is strong, and its source is Godself. Only when we have accepted God’s abiding love for us, only when we have lived in God’s enduring love for us, to put it another way, can we love someone else. And that love shapes every facet of our lives. When we’re able to accept God’s abiding, living, indwelling love, then and only then is it possible for us to love other people. And that kind of loving determines how we live as sisters and brothers with other people. Another name for sisters and brothers is people made in God’s image. The same as us. That kind of love requires and presumes a level of trust and intimacy that few of us have experienced. And when we’ve experienced it, the experience has been very brief. One cannot abide on the mountaintop. But those experiences are what we can call upon as we seek to walk with Christ. It requires trust and vulnerability to love and be loved like that. As Richard Louv wrote “We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see. Or hear. Or sense.” The perfect love that casts out fear is tangible, intimate, personal. That’s God’s love. Preach God’s love, and preach it fearlessly.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Dean Feldmeyer:
Acts 8:26-40
They Are Accepted (Evangelism)
The Ethiopian in this reading would have been rejected by the religious people of Philip’s community but God called Philip to go to him. Below are some successful people whose careers were threatened because of the rejection they felt due to their mental illness:
Demi Lovato – Bipolar Disorder
Catherine Zeta Jones – Bipolar Disorder II
Carrie Fisher – Bipolar Disorder & Depression
Jean-Claude Van Damme – Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder
Adam Levine – ADHD
Howie Mandel – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Michael Phelps – ADHD
It is, in large part, due to their bravery in coming forward and being honest about their problems that mental health is becoming understood less as a pariah and more of a treatable disease.
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
Rejected Then; Accepted Now (Evangelism)
Nine celebrities that weren't cool in school. Rejected then, they are more than accepted now.
1. Christina Hendricks
“My school days were pretty unhappy. I had the worst high school experience ever. I was a bit of a goth with purple hair and I was also part of the drama group, so my friends and I were all weird theatre people and everyone just hated us."
2. Steven Spielberg
“I was a nerd in those days. Outsider, like the kid that played the clarinet in the band and in orchestra, which I did.”
3. Taylor Swift
“I remember when I was in school, the whole reason I started writing songs was because I was alone a lot of the time. I'd sit there in school and I'd be hearing people like, 'Oh my god, this party that we're going to is gonna be so awesome on Friday. Everyone's invited except for [Taylor].'”
4. Charlize Theron
“I didn't have any boyfriends in high school. I had a massive, massive crush on this one guy. He was a couple of years older than me and I did not exist in his world.”
5. Selena Gomez
“I was bullied every second of every day in elementary and middle school.”
6. Christian Bale
“I took a beating from several boys for years. They put me through hell, punching and kicking me all the time.”
7. Lady Gaga
“Being teased for being ugly, having a big nose, being annoying. 'Your laugh is funny, you're weird, why do you always sing, why are you so into theater, why do you do your make-up like that?'”
8. Zac Efron
“I wasn’t a heartthrob at school; I was a geek, I was into musical theater, which isn’t perceived as the coolest thing. There were guys who were 6'1" with beards and big muscles and I was a gawky 17-year-old, a skinny, awkward kid. I was a late bloomer. Growing up was hell.”
9. Jennifer Garner
“I was a real nerd. I wasn’t the popular one, I was one of those girls on the edge of the group. I never wore the right clothes and I had a kind of natural geekiness. I was in the school band and I think that has a bit of a stigma at the age of 13. If you’d asked me what I wanted to be, I would have said something like a librarian.”
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
The Evangelizer or the Evangelized (Evangelism)
The story of Philip and the Ethiopian is a story about the evangelizer more than the evangelized. Often, we discover that by telling our story, whether it succeeds in converting or convincing another, it still manages to strengthen our own faith.
Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber used to recall that his grandfather suffered from a disability that made walking very difficult for him. Once, some guests asked him to tell a story about his favorite teacher, and he related how his master used to hop and dance while he prayed. Buber’s grandfather rose as he spoke and was so swept away by his story he was telling that he himself began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour he was cured of his lameness, said Buber.
We cannot tell the story of our Master without experiencing his power in our own lives.
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
These are our people (Evangelism)
One Sunday evening, William Booth, the English Methodist preacher and founder of the Salvation Army, was walking in London with his son, Bramwell, who was then 13 years old. The father surprised the son by taking him into a saloon! The place was crowded with men and women, many drunk, most bearing in their appearance the marks of their depraved and tormented lives. The toxic odor of tobacco and alcohol permeated the place. "Willie," Booth said to his son, "these are our people; these are the people I want you to live for and bring to Christ." Years later, Bramwell Booth wrote, "The impression never left me."
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
Fishing in each other's pond (Evangelism)
Episcopalian bishop, Sam Shoemaker, once summed up the problem of contemporary evangelism this way: "In the Great Commission the Lord has called us to be — like Peter — fishers of men. We've turned the commission around so that we have become merely keepers of the aquarium. Occasionally I take some fish out of your fishbowl and put them into mine, and you do the same with my bowl. But we're all tending the same fish."
* * *
John 15:1-8
The Tree of 40 Fruit (Vine & Branches)
The famous “Tree of 40 Fruit” includes only "stone fruits" from the Prunus genus, which all share very similar genetics. The tree looks like any other fruit tree for most of the year until spring, when it pops into pink, white and crimson blooms. In summer, the tree bursts with ripened fruit, including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries and almonds.
Often nicknamed the “Franken-tree” it was created not by a botanist but an artist grafting branches together over 10 years. More than just a conversation piece, however, it is firmly rooted in science.
"He has taken the idea of a single root stock and a single variety and amplified it to express something creative, and that's the artistic side of it for him," said Greg Peck, an assistant professor of horticulture at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. (Follow the link to see a picture of the tree in bloom.)
* * *
John 15:1-18
About Grapes and Vines (Vine & Branches)
No fruit or vegetable is mentioned more in the Bible than grapes. Depending on the translation you are using, this wonderful fruit is mentioned 56-60 times. So it might be nice to get a little better acquainted with this delectable fruit.
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:
1 John 4:7-21
Seeing God
“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us,” 1 John tells us, advising us to look for love made visible. Professor Daniel Aldrich, a professor at Northwestern University, found an example of that in his research on the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.
“In most parts of the country, some forty minutes elapsed between the undersea earthquake and the arrival of thirty-foot waves. Yet the death rates in the 133 affected cities, towns, and villages along the coast varied from zero to almost 10 percent. To explain the disparity, Aldrich and his fellow researcher Yasuyuki Sawada, a University of Tokyo economics professor, looked at factors like the average age of residents, the presence of seawalls, and the height of the tsunami when it hit land. Surprisingly, those physical elements couldn’t account for the varying survival rates. What did?”
The difference was each town’s level of social connection, or, what we might call love in action.
“Forty minutes was enough time for the able-bodied to travel the two or three kilometers from the lowest houses near the ocean to the highest point in town. It was not always enough time for the sick, elderly, infirm, disabled, or wheelchair bound to do so. Those who survived told Aldrich and his research team that a friend, a neighbor, a caregiver, or a family member helped them. That implied two things: First, someone knew that a disabled person lived in that house and needed help. “If you don’t know someone is there you’re not going to bother knocking,” Aldrich notes. Second, the helper was willing to endanger his or her own life to save someone else’s. No one knew how soon the tsunami would crash into the shore. Ferrying an elderly or disabled person uphill requires time. Most people wouldn’t bother unless they had an existing relationship strong enough to merit that kind of consideration.”
“You can’t build that during the disaster,” says Aldrich. “You can’t say, ‘Okay, the tsunami is coming, let’s go make friends now.’ You have to do this before the disaster strikes.” Aldrich calls this “the Mr. Rogers approach to disaster preparedness and recovery.” We might call it God’s love, made visible. (Story from This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are by Melody Warnick.)
* * *
1 John 4:7-21
Love One Another
“Love one another,” 1 John advises believers, noting that when we see love, we see God. Philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is not a believer in God, and yet he does believe deeply in love, especially the kind of love that takes work. He says what Christians know — that love is much more than the movie magic fantasy. “So we have this ideal of what love is and then these very, very unhelpful narratives of love. And they’re everywhere. They’re in movies and songs…But if you say to people, “Look, love is a painful, poignant, touching attempt by two flawed individuals to try and meet each other’s needs in situations of gross uncertainty and ignorance about who they are and who the other person is, but we’re going to do our best,” that’s a much more generous starting point. So the acceptance of ourselves as flawed creatures seems to me what love really is. Love is at its most necessary when we are weak, when we feel incomplete, and we must show love to one another at those points.” He adds, “What we call a love story is really just the beginning of a love story, but we leave that out. But most of us, we’re interested in long-term relationships. We’re not just interested in the moment that gets us into love; we’re interested in the survival of love over time.”
This kind of energetic love is the fabric of social connection, de Botton says, and “a functioning society requires — well, it requires two things that, again, just don’t sound very normal, but they require love and politeness. And by “love” I mean a capacity to enter imaginatively into the minds of people with whom you don’t immediately agree, and to look for the more charitable explanations for behavior which doesn’t appeal to you and which could seem plain wrong.” To love one another, as family members or friends or parts of the same social world, requires work, energy and a sense of humility.
* * *
1 John 4:7-21
Love on the Page
“Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another,” 1 John tells us. We usually think of love as something for people, or even pets, and Somik Raha takes it even further. He remembers, “Growing up in India, I had a hard time with most of my subjects, especially math. One day, after looking at my grades, my father had a heart-to-heart chat with me. He said, “The way to crack your subjects is to fall in love with them. When you start loving what you are learning, it will no longer look like work. Everything will fall in place after that. Just fall in love.” I was in sixth grade around then, and decided to take him seriously and literally said, “I love you” to my math textbook.”
Loving the math book changed something for him. “Then, something strange happened. I actually fell in love. I started enjoying the mystery behind each geometric question, soaking in it, and experiencing joy when I was able to solve it. Over the years, it got to a point where I would finish all the exercises in the textbook in a day and repeat it the next day and the day after. I would be thrilled to get an unknown question so I could soak in it and enjoy its mystery. Along with this head-over-heels love, my grades started improving. When I finished tenth grade, I had scored 99% in math.”
Somik Raha started to apply this principle of love in other places, first with history, which soon came alive for him, then English grammar. “I was convinced that one just could not love English grammar. But trying it there, I developed a love for writing which continues to this day. This philosophy completely transformed my life, improved my grades, and most importantly, made me simply stop caring about grades and actually enjoy learning.”
“Love one another” is meaningful advice for all parts of life.
* * *
John 15:1-8
Vine and Branches
The late civil rights warrior and member of Congress John Lewis recalls his training in non-violence before he set out to be part of the civil rights protests of the 1960’s. The training evoked Jesus’ instruction to abide in him, so we can bear much fruit. Reflecting on the truth that we thrive when rooted in God, Lewis said in an interview, “First of all, you have to grow. It’s just not something that is natural. You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. And in the religious sense, in the moral sense, you can say in the bosom of every human being, there is a spark of the divine. So you don’t have a right as a human to abuse that spark of the divine in your fellow human being.” In their training, Lewis and the other students would experience people yelling at them, hitting them, pouring water on them and calling them names, and work to remain calm.
Lewis said, “We, from time to time, would discuss if you see someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person, you know, years ago that person was an innocent child, innocent little baby. And so what happened? Something go wrong? Did the environment? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? So you try to appeal to the goodness of every human being and you don’t give up. You never give up on anyone.” He tried to maintain the connection with people who were being aggressive by keeping eye contact with them, understanding that they were all branches on the same vine, no matter what kind of violence was happening.
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:
Acts 8:26-40
What prevents acceptance?
Philip’s encounter with the eunuch revolves around the Ethiopian’s curious and brave questions. The every-day reality faced by the eunuch is that he was not only a foreigner and a person of color (literally translated, he was a “burnt face”), he was also sexual minority and also a person of great power. In the end, however, he would have been excluded from participating in the religious rituals to which he obviously felt drawn. His curiosity leads him to ask Philip, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
It’s a question worthy of the church’s consideration. For example, LGTBQ activists have raised concerns about the growing anti-LGBTQ legislation under consideration by state governments. David Alphonso, president of the Human Rights Campaign, recently said that the number of bills targeting transgender youth is “unprecedented,” and that 2021 was on track to “become the worst year for state legislative attacks against LGBTQ people in history.”
Several Catholic leaders, including a bishop and an archbishop, signed a letter condemning discrimination against transgender persons, even though the church itself has a less progressive view of LGTQ inclusion. “We are commanded to respect the full dignity and humanity in every individual, and to be people of justice, mercy and compassion,” the letter reads, adding that “It should alarm all Catholics that individuals who are transgender experience disproportionate rates of discrimination, harassment, and violence — violence that is often fatal, and that overwhelming affects Black and Brown individuals.”
Acceptance of LGTQ persons has grown “radically” over the past thirteen or so years, according to Religion in Public. “From the reports of our survey respondents, American religion has rapidly changed its orientation toward LGBTQ Americans, becoming more accepting. This finding is in accord with noted shifts in religious elite calls for LGBTQ acceptance, even among some evangelicals.
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
Discrimination against LGBTQ youth
Researchers from the Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth, have shown that LGBTQ persons under 25 face workplace discrimination at alarming rates.
“When things are going bad, they end up going worse for folks who are trans and non-binary,” said Dr. Amy Green, vice president of research at The Trevor Project. “In terms of things like workplace discrimination, the number overall is quite high. But the differences between LGBTQ who are trans and non-binary compared to those who are cisgender is striking, with 61% of transgender youth who are employed saying that they've experienced discrimination compared to under 30% of those who are cisgender. That's a really big number, showing more than half are more likely than not to experience it.”
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
Hiding in plain sight
It didn’t take long for Philip to find the Ethiopian. It turns out he seemed to be hiding in plain sight, out in his carriage somewhere on a stretch of road leading out of Jerusalem. Likewise, it turns out that the percentage of gay persons living in rural America is much higher than conventional wisdom has always believed. The assumption, says Colin Johnson, professor of gender studies at the University of Indiana, has always been that “queer history begins at the city gates.”
Not so, according to a recent study. About 3-5% of rural adults and 10% of rural youth identify as LGBTQ, or roughly 3.8 million persons. Johnson has studied the histories of queer persons in rural areas. He notes that many times the perception that homosexuality is an urban phenomenon requires rethinking. Johnson discovered that by sidestepping stereotypes of gay culture, many elderly rural residents came to a “radical reconceptualization of the people they knew when they were younger.”
Fairly soon, says Johnson, people began making connections.
“People living with their best friends their entire lives, these arrangements that were familiar in small areas, they didn’t look like the self-conscious, politically actualized gay and lesbian identity that many people were familiar with. But they were intimate, same-sex relationships that everybody seemed to recognize even if they didn’t have the terminology to describe it.”
* * *
John 15:1-8
If you remain in me…
When the pandemic arrived, congregations were forced to adapt and change in ways many had either previously resisted or not considered. In some cases, the changes produced a surge in creativity and adaptation. But how much the church has changed is not yet clear. It is clear, however, that previous understandings of Jesus’ metaphor of the vine and branches in John 15 may need to be reconsidered.
What does it mean to abide in the church in 2021?
John 15:1-8
Bearing the fruit of mutuality
While we have often focused on the negatives of the pandemic, a British scholar of loneliness has noted that there have been significant benefits of the increased isolation. Fay Bound Alberti reports her findings in a recent posting on “The Conversation.”
“Yet something quite profound,” she says, “is also happening in terms of our relationships with people we don’t know. Despite negativity about the societal impacts of Covid-19 — from increased levels of loneliness to the limitations of social media — we are seeing some positive and unexpected results, including widespread outpourings of charity, togetherness and empathy for complete strangers. We might even be seeing a grassroots redefinition of what “community” means in the 21st century.
Alberti points to the many places where mutuality has flourished, including volunteers in Wuhan, China, who worked to provide assistance to care workers, helplines established to provide personal protective equipment in the United States by Indian Americans, and volunteers in the UK who went searching for vulnerable persons and others at special risk.
“These forms of community action are self-organised,” Alberti says, “and dependent on the same social media networks that have previously been condemned as antithetical to real relationships. And they seem to be spreading, virus-like, between cities and countries.”
* * *
John 15:1-8
When connections fail
Joanna Weiss, editor of Experience Magazine, notes that there is a deep desire for the fruitful experiences of connection that has kept many of us together throughout the pandemic.
We’ve needed each other, and that’s good to know. One of the hardest things about Covid has been the way it rendered friendship dangerous — so many transmissions springing from in-person gatherings, as friends came together despite the directives. You can condemn all of those people as cavalier about public health. Or you could see their lapses as a feature of humanity.
We’ve learned, this past year, that connection isn’t the same when it’s remote. And while many of us have broken the rules at least once or twice, we should acknowledge the lengths we’ve gone to see each other in relative safety.
Weiss’ yearning may be compared to the observations Jesus makes about the interdependence of the fruit and the vine in John 15. She yearns for the physical experiences of friendship, concluding “I want to live dangerously with my besties. I want to double-dip in the guacamole. I want to sip your cocktail to see if I like it, too. I want to scream together into a karaoke microphone. I’ll pick the first song: “With a Little Help From My Friends.”
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
One: All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to God.
All: All the families of the nations shall worship before God.
One: For dominion belongs to our God.
All: God rules over the nations.
One: Future generations will be told about God.
All: We will proclaim God’s deliverance to a people yet unborn.
OR
One: The Creator of us all invites us into the divine presence.
All: With joy we say yes to God's gracious invitation.
One: The arms of God's welcome are open to us all.
All: Thanks be to our loving parent-God.
One: Share the good news of God's welcome to all.
All: We will invite everyone to come with us to God.
Hymns and Songs:
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
UMH: 89
H82: 376
PH: 464
AAHH: 120
NNBH: 40
NCH: 4
CH: 2
LBW: 551
ELW: 836
W&P: 59
AMEC: 75
STLT: 29
From All That Dwell Below the Skies
UMH: 101
H82: 380
PH: 229
NCH: 27
CH: 49
LBW: 550
AMEC: 69
STLT: 381
He Leadeth Me: O Blessed Thought
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395
All My Hope Is Firmly Grounded
UMH: 132
H82: 665
NCH: 408
CH: 88
ELW: 757
Now the Green Blade Riseth
UMH: 311
H82: 204
NCH: 238
CH: 230
LBW: 148
ELW: 379
W&P: 311
STLT: 266
Christ Is Alive
UMH: 318
H82: 182
PH: 108
LBW: 363
ELW: 389
W&P: 312
Renew: 300
Jesus Calls Us
UMH: 398
H82: 549/550
NNBH: 183
NCH: 171/172
CH: 337
LBW: 494
ELW: 696
W&P: 345
AMEC: 238
I Am Thine, O Lord
UMH: 419
AAHH: 387
NNBH: 202
NCH: 455
CH: 601
W&P: 408
AMEC: 283
Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life
UMH: 427
H82: 609
PH: 408
NCH: 543
CH: 665
LBW: 429
ELW: 719
W&P: 591
AMEC: 561
Christ for the World We Sing
UMH: 568
H82: 537
W&P: 561
AMEC: 565
Renew: 299
I'm Gonn'a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing
CCB: 22
He Is Exalted
CCB: 30
Renew: 238
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
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
ELW: 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 is the giver of all life:
Grant us the grace to see the value in all people
and to share with them your great love;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the giver of life. Each person we meet has been created and is loved by you. Help us to see that value in others and to share with them your great love. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our trying to keep your love for ourselves and not share it with others.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have created us all out of your love and made us in your image and yet we look on one another and judge one better than another. We look on the outside and condemn what is on the inside. Our own follies and sins we readily overlook while holding others to a strict account for their behavior. Forgive us and give us your sight that we may see all people as your beloved children. Amen.
One: God is our beloved parent who readily forgives us as we are invited to forgive others.
Prayers of the People
Blessed and holy are you, O God, creator of all. You made each of us in your image, shaped out of your love.
(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. You have created us all out of your love and made us in your image and yet we look on one another and judge one better than another. We look on the outside and condemn what is on the inside. Our own follies and sins we readily overlook while holding others to a strict account for their behavior. Forgive us and give us your sight that we may see all people as your beloved children.
We give you thanks for our creation and for your Spirit that fills us with life. We thank you for your constant love and grace that surrounds us day by day. We thank you for those who have shared your love with us when we are unlovable.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our need and especially for those who are pushed away by others and feel unloved and unlovable. We pray for those who struggle with who they are and wonder about their own worth. We offer to your healing presence those who suffer in mind, body, or spirit. We pray for those who have allowed hatred and prejudice to block your loving presence from their hearts.
(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 Our Father 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
Play "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things does not belong" using a group of object (or pictures of objects) that are obviously different and yet share characteristics at a larger level. A line up of cats and one dog. A line up of houses and one tent. A group of blue marbles and one red marble. We can see the differences and say one does not belong but then we can look again and see that they all belong. We just need to expand the way we look. All of the cats and the dog are animals or pets or furry. The houses and the tents are places to live, to be out of the rain. The one marble is a different color but it is still a marble. We often look at people and see differences but God looks and sees God's children. God invites us to see each other as part of God's family. We all belong. Even if we are different.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMONS
Running to Keep Up
by Katy Stenta
Acts 8:26-40
Supplies: Toy Car, Two Men Figures to represent Ethiopian and Philip, Blue string/ribbon to represent water
Tell the story of The Ethiopian Eunuch
Lay the Philip Figure Down as if he is asleep. Set the car a little ways apart and the string further down the road.
“This is Philip; he is a disciple of Jesus. One night when he was asleep — a messenger angel of God comes and wakes him up and tells him to go.” (Stand Philip up.)
“He sends him besides a chariot, which was how people got around before cars. Philip RAN to catch up with the vehicle to see the man inside” (Move the car along, and have the Philip figure catch up.)
“Then the man inside stopped the car and said he was trying to read and learn about God. He asked if Philip knew what the book about God meant. Philip said he could help, so the Eunuch stopped the vehicle.” (Have the vehicle stop.)
“Philip must have been surprised to see this foreign person, who was in between being a girl and a boy, who would not be allowed in Temple to learn about God, but he started to explain who Jesus was and how God so loved the world that he sent Jesus Christ to save it. It was then they happened on a river.” (Drive the car. Put figures inside or pretend to and put them away for a minute. Drive toward the river/ribbon.)
“The eunuch said, 'This is amazing! What is to prevent me from being baptized? And he and Philip went down to the river and Philip baptized the Eunuch.” (Stop the car at the river and take the two figures to the water. Show Philip baptizing the eunuch in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.)
“And then the Holy Spirit miraculously whisked Philip away the Eunuch rejoiced because he was baptized.” (Whisk Philip away and “voop” him to disaapper. Have the eunuch say “Hallelujah! I’ve been baptized!” and jump up and down.)
What was special about this story? (Baptism, angels, God calling Phililp.)
Have you been baptized? (Encourage both those who say yes or no that baptism is very special.)
Do you think people rejoiced when you were baptized? Why? (Probably yes, talk about how baptism is like a birthday in God’s family. God celebrates you as a part of God’s family.”)
Who does God want us to baptize? (Everyone!)
Prayer: Repeat after me
Dear God,
Thank you
for calling us
to baptize and be baptized
help us
to rejoice
with everyone
who is part
of God’s family.
Amen.
* * *
With God We Can Be Fruitful
by Katy Stenta
John 15:1-18
Props: Bring grapes on the stem. (You may need to cut some in quarters to pass out to preschoolers for safety.)
Hand out grapes to each participant. Ask them to leave them on the dish for a minute.
Read John 15:1-8.
Notice how each grape is attached to each other? How are they attached? (sticks, stems, vines are possible answers)
What does it mean that God is the vine and we are the branches? (Point out the thick and thin stems.)
If the main stem is God and we are the branches, do you see what we make together? (Fruit!)
God says that we need each other to make our lives better. We need God and we need a community. Fruit means good things. Can you think of some good things we as the church community do together? (Have some mission and ministry examples if no one answers.)
Let’s read it one more time, while we eat our grapes? (Pass out sliced grapes as needed.)
John 15:1-8...
Amen!
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, May 2, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 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.
- The Hard Work of the Spirit by Bethany Peerbolte — The Spirit is the one who guides Phillip. It tells him exactly where to be and who to join on their journey. The Spirit has been working behind the scenes for longer than we even get to see.
- Second Thoughts: If We Can Just Love Perfectly by Tom Willadsen — The fourth chapter of 1 John may be the magic bullet that helps Americans get past our fear and live in peace and harmony. Perfect love casts out fear. That’s the ticket! If we can just love perfectly we won’t be afraid of each other anymore.
- Sermon illustrations by Dean Feldmeyer, Mary Austin, Chris Keating.
- Worship resources by George Reed.
- Children's sermons (2): Running to Keep Up / With God We Can Be Fruitful by Katy Stenta.
The Hard Work of the Spiritby Bethany Peerbolte
Acts 8:26-40
In the Scripture
Acts is the story of what happens once the Holy Spirit takes over the reins of the Jesus movement. The first recorded movements of the Spirit give us a clear picture as to what, or who, the Spirit prioritizes. The first thing that happens is the apostles receive the gift of speaking in every language. A good sign that the Spirit wants to take the gospel to every corner of humanity. A little later we see this conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch. In this case the Spirit chooses a person who identifies outside the majority in race, religion, and sexuality. This is an incredible neon flashing arrow pointing out who God wants included in the new covenant Jesus initiated.
At the time scripture was written, the word “eunuch” was used to describe many different sexually diverse groups. If someone was born with unidentifiable, or both female and male genitalia they would be labeled as a eunuch. Additionally, anyone who had severe damage to their genitals in their lifetime would be included in this grouping of people. It was also a common practice among royal households to force castration onto male slaves who served in female spaces. This was less about protecting the women in those spaces and more about wanting to be sure any children born were purely of the husband’s bloodline.
The eunuch Phillip meets seems to be a case of the later. Scripture says this eunuch served a queen in an official capacity. Whether they were born a eunuch and went into the work for the benefit of their birth status or were forcibly made a eunuch we do not know. Either way they have made the best of their status and risen to an important place within the queen’s house. They are so well situated they have the freedom to travel to Jerusalem to worship.
Since they are reading Isaiah and in Jerusalem to worship, we can be fairly sure they follow some denomination of Judaism. Probably one of more liberal practice since a strict reading of Levitical law would have excluded eunuchs from every aspect of worship. Some scholars have mused that they could have been born Jewish and a eunuch and fell into slavery in royal households because the cultural system did not provide better work options for a eunuch.
The Spirit and the eunuch are leading this meeting. Phillip is told where to go and who to go to. When the work, the baptism, was done, the Spirit whisks Phillip away to the next bit of work. This is not an apostle with a wild idea of including eunuchs and Ethiopians, it is the intention of the Spirit to include. The eunuch is the one who asks for help interpreting. They are the one who asks to be baptized. This is not an apostle evangelizing randomly and encouraging people to give themselves to Christ, it is the desire of the eunuch to learn and be baptized.
Philip is only a conduit through which the Spirit reaches out to the Ethiopian eunuch. All Phillip needs to do is follow, know his scripture, and listen to the desires of the eunuch to know God more fully.
In the News
The trend of division has continued in the United States. A lot of the accusations against the other side, whichever side that may be, is their unwillingness to join those affected by the policies they make and listen to their experiences.
Vice President Harris has found herself under attack for not going to the border and witnessing the human rights violations of which homeland security is being accused. The excuse being given for why Vice President Kamala Harris has not gone to the border is that she is working on the issue on a diplomatic level. She does have plans to travel to countries deemed the root of the immigration issue. Whether Covid is getting in the way of those plans or she is unwilling to move forward on the issue is being debated.
Either way those who want immigration reform and who see human rights violations happening are angry that they are not being heard. They feel like a visit will quickly make their case clear. The Vice President is being asked to join them at the border to listen to the experiences of immigrants with the hope that she will then effect change on the federal level.
The governor of Montana is also under fire for acting on abortion laws without first listening to the experiences of women. He signed three bills that would limit the availability of abortions in Montana. His opponents want him to understand the issue better and from the perspective of women before putting their lives at risk with these new laws.
The actions of men when it comes to the rights of women to make choices pertaining to their bodies is a long standing argument between pro-life and pro-choice camps. Those who want abortion to be available so that women can choose how to handle their pregnancies say men simply cannot understand the complexity of the choice and have no place limiting what they cannot understand. Making it worse, it seems lawmakers like the governor of Montana consistently refuse to hear another perspective and walk with women on this issue — choosing instead to make laws that women say are oppressive.
Bearing witness took front and center this month as the footage a 17 year old girl took of George Floyd’s murder became the center piece of the trial against Derek Chauvin. The prosecution depended heavily on that footage to show how early reports of the incident blatantly covered up the truth. The footage was key in convincing the jury to convict Chauvin on all three counts against him. This historic decision would not have been possible if that young woman walked away. Her choice to stand by led to the chance for accountability where there has been none in the past.
Holding the phone on George Floyd could not have been an easy task. I am sure she wished to have been anywhere else in that moment. Unfortunately, that was the moment she was called to and she followed the Spirit to her place. Holding the phone could not have felt like enough in the moment. She must have had nights where she wondered if she should have done more. For that moment it was the right thing to do though. Any more or any less would not have gotten us into the world where police officers are held responsible for their choices. There were other forces and people in control in the moment and her witness and presence was her calling.
In the Sermon
An overlooked detail of this conversion is the role of the Spirit. We applaud Phillip for putting himself out there. Praise him for knowing his scripture well enough to convince this stranger from another land that Jesus was worth following. The eunuch gets their moment of admiration for being willing to be baptized on the spot. Being so moved by the gospel they could not wait to join the new covenant family. Yet, the Spirit is hard at work here.
The Spirit is the one who guides Phillip. It tells him exactly where to be and who to join on their journey. The Spirit has been working behind the scenes for longer than we even get to see, putting the eunuch on his journey to Jerusalem so that the gospel could return with them to Ethiopia. When the Spirit works there are no coincidences either. There is a reason this person is chosen to interact with Phillip. They stand for a path of inclusion that no apostle could have thought of on their own. No matter the race, religion, sexuality, or gender, the gospel is a message that welcomes them. This story shows the direction in which the gospel is heading.
Phillip’s role in all of this is to be present. Before this encounter he has learned and studied the scripture. Not knowing who he would be called to teach, Phillip educated himself so he would be ready. He stayed open to the Spirit’s moving. He did not object to going on the wilderness road nor did he question the guidance to join a eunuch as they read scripture.
Phillip also never assumes he knows why the Spirit put him there. He relies on the questions of the eunuch to tell him what to do next. Even though Phillip is the more learned in the scripture he humbly asks “do you know what you are reading?” Only after the eunuch invited him to give his insight does Phillip unpack it.
This exchange of a humble teacher and an eager student reaps the brilliant reward of a heart changed. The eunuch asks if he can be baptized to which Phillip happily affirms the eunuch’s choice.
There has been a lot of controversy over churches proclaiming Black Lives Matter. While some are genuine concerns over the activity and leadership of the movement, many Christians show their lack of understanding of moments like this between a eunuch and an apostle. Phillip is the one with authority and power in scripture, yet he defers to the eunuch to lead the interaction. There are crowds of people Phillip could be preaching too, reaping hundreds of baptisms, but the Spirit called him to the side of this one person.
No matter how much we may think we know about life we should always remain humble enough to let the oppressed lead the conversation. Assuming we know what someone needs, even when it comes to an understanding of Jesus, will not give us the reward of a freed soul. Our jobs a Christians is to show up where the Spirit leads us and be present with the people the Spirit wants to reach. Listening to their story and their experiences and their understanding to find where we can be helpful is how we make the greatest impact.
SECOND THOUGHTSIf We Can Just Love Perfectly
by Tom Willadsen
Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8, Psalm 22:25-31
In the Scriptures
Acts 8:26-40 — here’s something I’d overlooked until this week: There’s a third character in this vignette, the chariot driver. Put yourself is his place. You’re driving this big shot home to Ethiopia from Jerusalem. He’s reading this holy book out loud but doesn’t understand it. A stranger flags you down. You stop the chariot. The stranger gets in and starts explaining the words from the holy book. Just as it starts to get interesting, the big shot in back tells you to stop the chariot next to a ditch with some dirty water in it. The big shot and the teacher go down into the water. The teacher says something you can’t hear, then the big shot gets back in the chariot. He’s elated; you’ve never seen him happier. But what happened to the other guy? Did he fall into the ditch and drown? Did he decide to stay there and enjoy a soothing mud treatment? Should you wait for him? No, no, just head for home, you’re told. So you do. But what a story to tell the people back in Ethiopia!
John 15:1-8 is part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples. There is not an obvious place in John 15 to end the reading. The theme of God being the vinedresser, that is, the one who cuts and disposes of branches that do not bear fruit, may have been especially important to the Christian community for whom John was writing for. This text proves one of the central tenets of Christian faith — that Jesus was divine. He said, “I am duh vine, youse guys are duh branches.” (The only thing that makes seminary humor memorable is that there was so little of it.) In this reading Jesus uses the verb “abide” (μενει in Greek). (There was an extended explanation of this term in the illustrations portion of The Immediate Word for April 25). John’s use of μενει foreshadows its frequent appearance in today’s epistle reading.
Psalm 22 is what Jesus began reciting on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Scholars tell us that Jesus was really citing the entire psalm on the cross, so even though he didn’t say the words, we should understand it as though he had recited the whole thing, which gets to redemption in the latter part of the psalm, the part included in today’s psalm reading.
1 John 4:7-21
God is love. God loves. We love because God loved us first; God started it! As the author of 1 John extolls love’s goodness, he also addresses the Gnostic presence that has appeared in the Christian community. Gnostics believe that one grows in faith through knowledge of God, rather than through experiencing and thus being able to express the love of God. To know God is to abide in God’s love. This is way more than mere knowledge that one is beloved by God. This love is a way of life; this love is life. One does not merely feel or know God’s love; one abides in God’s love. One is surrounded by it. God’s love, the author uses the Greek αγαπε (agape) repeatedly, must be experienced. As Rudolf Bultmann wrote, “Only he who is already loved can love, only he who has been trusted can trust….” [The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 12, Abingdon Press, 1957, p. 281]
In the News
The world breathed a collective sigh of relief on Tuesday, April 20, about 4 p.m. Central Time when the verdicts in the George Floyd murder case came back “guilty” on all three counts. The trial commanded media attention and was covered in minute detail not only by media outlets in the United States, but around the world. Major cities in the United States braced for civil unrest, and feared rioting, in the event that the jury had reached not guilty verdicts. Fox News personality Tucker Carlson speculated that the jury could not have returned a verdict other than guilty because they knew that to do otherwise would have sparked rioting, perhaps like the United States has never experienced before. I talked to people who held this opinion. They were convinced that George Floyd’s murderer could not have gotten a fair trial, with the jury aware of the magnitude of their decision. I am of the opinion that the jury did indeed vote their consciences and reached the right verdict — even with the knowledge of certain civil unrest hanging in the balance.
My worst fear was a not guilty verdict. My second worst fear was that a guilty verdict would spur celebrations in the streets that would then turn violent. While there were celebrations, they were restrained and dignified. There was some joy, but the overall emotion was relief and a sense that here was an occasion when the system had gotten it right. Country music polymath and modern-day theologian, Willie Nelson, famously expressed this sentiment when he sang “that would make one in a row.”
Was the verdict in the George Floyd murder case a turning point in American history? It is certainly exceptional that a white police officer was convicted of killing a Black man. It was also exceptional that police officers testified against one of their own. The blue wall of silence was breached, this time. Whether this is the beginning of a trend or the result of extremely powerful videos shot by bystanders, it is too soon to tell. There is some ambivalence around these verdicts. A terrific expression of this ambivalence as experienced and expressed by Blacks is in this clip from The Amber Ruffin Show. While host Amber Ruffin sings a parody of Etta James’s classic “At Last,” her sidekick, Tarik Davis points out that this is not a time to celebrate, there is still work to be done. Tellingly, Davis asks Ruffin “The next time you get stopped by the police, will you fear for your life?” Ruffin answers dejectedly “Yes.” Fear. Hold onto that word. Fear of the police has not gone away.
The other news story that has dominated the airwaves—and will not go away for a long, long time--the Covid-19 pandemic, has been producing increasingly good news recently. As of Sunday, April 25, some of the news is hopeful. More than 53% of Americans have received at least one dose of a vaccine. If you look at the map, however, you’ll find that the states with the lowest vaccination rates are in the South and the Mountain West, places where distrust of the federal government is highest. Conservative media has sown doubts about the validity of science and the efficacy of the three vaccines that are currently approved for use in the United States. The next steps we take in achieving herd immunity as a nation will require concerted effort to overcome vaccine reluctance. Fear of science, the government, and having our “rights” taken from us — forget about the common good — is impeding our recovery, the return to “normal” that we long for. Fear. There’s that word again.
In the Sermon
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” (1 John 4:18, NRSV)
Fear is all around us. Fear is a four-letter word. Nobody wants to talk about it, but Americans are afraid of each other. It is well-established that African Americans are afraid of the police, but we rarely hear about the fear that police officers feel. We all know that people make bad decisions when they are afraid. If nothing else, fear limits our ability to consider options. Fight, flight or freeze are the sum of the reptile brain’s repertoire of responses to fear.
It might appear that this gem of a verse tucked toward the end of the fourth chapter of 1 John may be the magic bullet that helps Americans get past our fear and live in peace and harmony. Perfect love casts out fear. That’s the ticket! If we can just love perfectly we won’t be afraid of each other anymore.
What often goes without saying, or acknowledging, when Americans talk about race is that white people are afraid of Black people. I can’t count the number of times in the past year I’ve heard people begin sentences saying, “I’m not racist, but...” This sentence is invariably followed by an observation about what “those people always do.” The fact is white people and Black people do not have much contact with one another and most white Americans can live their lives without ever being in a place or situation where they are not a strong majority. Law, custom and habit have conspired — and continue to conspire — to keep the races apart. In our estrangement from one another fear is a nearly inevitable reaction.
It is tempting to take the words from 1 John and proclaim that love is the antidote to fear. At one level that is true, but at a very deep level. For love to have that effect, we must love as deeply as God loves us. We are profoundly shallow when it comes to loving God.
Every time I end a phone conversation with my mother and my sons I say, “I love you.” It’s true and it reminds both of us of the bonds of love that unite us. Never have I said, “Mom, I abide in your love.” Or “Mom, you abide in my love.” The love that we find in 1 John is one that is experienced more than being known or felt. It is strong, and its source is Godself. Only when we have accepted God’s abiding love for us, only when we have lived in God’s enduring love for us, to put it another way, can we love someone else. And that love shapes every facet of our lives. When we’re able to accept God’s abiding, living, indwelling love, then and only then is it possible for us to love other people. And that kind of loving determines how we live as sisters and brothers with other people. Another name for sisters and brothers is people made in God’s image. The same as us. That kind of love requires and presumes a level of trust and intimacy that few of us have experienced. And when we’ve experienced it, the experience has been very brief. One cannot abide on the mountaintop. But those experiences are what we can call upon as we seek to walk with Christ. It requires trust and vulnerability to love and be loved like that. As Richard Louv wrote “We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see. Or hear. Or sense.” The perfect love that casts out fear is tangible, intimate, personal. That’s God’s love. Preach God’s love, and preach it fearlessly.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Dean Feldmeyer:Acts 8:26-40
They Are Accepted (Evangelism)
The Ethiopian in this reading would have been rejected by the religious people of Philip’s community but God called Philip to go to him. Below are some successful people whose careers were threatened because of the rejection they felt due to their mental illness:
Demi Lovato – Bipolar Disorder
Catherine Zeta Jones – Bipolar Disorder II
Carrie Fisher – Bipolar Disorder & Depression
Jean-Claude Van Damme – Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder
Adam Levine – ADHD
Howie Mandel – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Michael Phelps – ADHD
It is, in large part, due to their bravery in coming forward and being honest about their problems that mental health is becoming understood less as a pariah and more of a treatable disease.
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
Rejected Then; Accepted Now (Evangelism)
Nine celebrities that weren't cool in school. Rejected then, they are more than accepted now.
1. Christina Hendricks
“My school days were pretty unhappy. I had the worst high school experience ever. I was a bit of a goth with purple hair and I was also part of the drama group, so my friends and I were all weird theatre people and everyone just hated us."
2. Steven Spielberg
“I was a nerd in those days. Outsider, like the kid that played the clarinet in the band and in orchestra, which I did.”
3. Taylor Swift
“I remember when I was in school, the whole reason I started writing songs was because I was alone a lot of the time. I'd sit there in school and I'd be hearing people like, 'Oh my god, this party that we're going to is gonna be so awesome on Friday. Everyone's invited except for [Taylor].'”
4. Charlize Theron
“I didn't have any boyfriends in high school. I had a massive, massive crush on this one guy. He was a couple of years older than me and I did not exist in his world.”
5. Selena Gomez
“I was bullied every second of every day in elementary and middle school.”
6. Christian Bale
“I took a beating from several boys for years. They put me through hell, punching and kicking me all the time.”
7. Lady Gaga
“Being teased for being ugly, having a big nose, being annoying. 'Your laugh is funny, you're weird, why do you always sing, why are you so into theater, why do you do your make-up like that?'”
8. Zac Efron
“I wasn’t a heartthrob at school; I was a geek, I was into musical theater, which isn’t perceived as the coolest thing. There were guys who were 6'1" with beards and big muscles and I was a gawky 17-year-old, a skinny, awkward kid. I was a late bloomer. Growing up was hell.”
9. Jennifer Garner
“I was a real nerd. I wasn’t the popular one, I was one of those girls on the edge of the group. I never wore the right clothes and I had a kind of natural geekiness. I was in the school band and I think that has a bit of a stigma at the age of 13. If you’d asked me what I wanted to be, I would have said something like a librarian.”
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
The Evangelizer or the Evangelized (Evangelism)
The story of Philip and the Ethiopian is a story about the evangelizer more than the evangelized. Often, we discover that by telling our story, whether it succeeds in converting or convincing another, it still manages to strengthen our own faith.
Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber used to recall that his grandfather suffered from a disability that made walking very difficult for him. Once, some guests asked him to tell a story about his favorite teacher, and he related how his master used to hop and dance while he prayed. Buber’s grandfather rose as he spoke and was so swept away by his story he was telling that he himself began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour he was cured of his lameness, said Buber.
We cannot tell the story of our Master without experiencing his power in our own lives.
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
These are our people (Evangelism)
One Sunday evening, William Booth, the English Methodist preacher and founder of the Salvation Army, was walking in London with his son, Bramwell, who was then 13 years old. The father surprised the son by taking him into a saloon! The place was crowded with men and women, many drunk, most bearing in their appearance the marks of their depraved and tormented lives. The toxic odor of tobacco and alcohol permeated the place. "Willie," Booth said to his son, "these are our people; these are the people I want you to live for and bring to Christ." Years later, Bramwell Booth wrote, "The impression never left me."
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
Fishing in each other's pond (Evangelism)
Episcopalian bishop, Sam Shoemaker, once summed up the problem of contemporary evangelism this way: "In the Great Commission the Lord has called us to be — like Peter — fishers of men. We've turned the commission around so that we have become merely keepers of the aquarium. Occasionally I take some fish out of your fishbowl and put them into mine, and you do the same with my bowl. But we're all tending the same fish."
* * *
John 15:1-8
The Tree of 40 Fruit (Vine & Branches)
The famous “Tree of 40 Fruit” includes only "stone fruits" from the Prunus genus, which all share very similar genetics. The tree looks like any other fruit tree for most of the year until spring, when it pops into pink, white and crimson blooms. In summer, the tree bursts with ripened fruit, including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries and almonds.
Often nicknamed the “Franken-tree” it was created not by a botanist but an artist grafting branches together over 10 years. More than just a conversation piece, however, it is firmly rooted in science.
"He has taken the idea of a single root stock and a single variety and amplified it to express something creative, and that's the artistic side of it for him," said Greg Peck, an assistant professor of horticulture at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. (Follow the link to see a picture of the tree in bloom.)
* * *
John 15:1-18
About Grapes and Vines (Vine & Branches)
No fruit or vegetable is mentioned more in the Bible than grapes. Depending on the translation you are using, this wonderful fruit is mentioned 56-60 times. So it might be nice to get a little better acquainted with this delectable fruit.
- There are about 60 species and 8,000 varieties of grapes, only seven of which existed in the Middle East during the time of Jesus. They were used, primarily, to make wine but they were also eaten fresh and dried into raisins.
- Grapes are actually berries. Their closest cousin is the blueberry.
- Grapes were first brought to the Americas by explorers from Spain about 300 years ago.
- One cup of grapes, with about 100 calories, provides more than a quarter of the daily recommended values of vitamins K and C. Grape seeds, which are edible, are chock-full of antioxidants.
- It takes about 2.5 pounds of grapes to make one bottle of wine.
- Raisins are dried, sweet grapes. The drying happens naturally when the grapes are left in sunlight.
- The plump, blue Concord grapes get their name from Concord, Massachusetts, where they were developed. They have a distinctive taste and can survive colder climates.
- Grapes come in many colors, including green, red, black, yellow, pink, and purple. "White" grapes are actually green.
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:1 John 4:7-21
Seeing God
“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us,” 1 John tells us, advising us to look for love made visible. Professor Daniel Aldrich, a professor at Northwestern University, found an example of that in his research on the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.
“In most parts of the country, some forty minutes elapsed between the undersea earthquake and the arrival of thirty-foot waves. Yet the death rates in the 133 affected cities, towns, and villages along the coast varied from zero to almost 10 percent. To explain the disparity, Aldrich and his fellow researcher Yasuyuki Sawada, a University of Tokyo economics professor, looked at factors like the average age of residents, the presence of seawalls, and the height of the tsunami when it hit land. Surprisingly, those physical elements couldn’t account for the varying survival rates. What did?”
The difference was each town’s level of social connection, or, what we might call love in action.
“Forty minutes was enough time for the able-bodied to travel the two or three kilometers from the lowest houses near the ocean to the highest point in town. It was not always enough time for the sick, elderly, infirm, disabled, or wheelchair bound to do so. Those who survived told Aldrich and his research team that a friend, a neighbor, a caregiver, or a family member helped them. That implied two things: First, someone knew that a disabled person lived in that house and needed help. “If you don’t know someone is there you’re not going to bother knocking,” Aldrich notes. Second, the helper was willing to endanger his or her own life to save someone else’s. No one knew how soon the tsunami would crash into the shore. Ferrying an elderly or disabled person uphill requires time. Most people wouldn’t bother unless they had an existing relationship strong enough to merit that kind of consideration.”
“You can’t build that during the disaster,” says Aldrich. “You can’t say, ‘Okay, the tsunami is coming, let’s go make friends now.’ You have to do this before the disaster strikes.” Aldrich calls this “the Mr. Rogers approach to disaster preparedness and recovery.” We might call it God’s love, made visible. (Story from This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are by Melody Warnick.)
* * *
1 John 4:7-21
Love One Another
“Love one another,” 1 John advises believers, noting that when we see love, we see God. Philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is not a believer in God, and yet he does believe deeply in love, especially the kind of love that takes work. He says what Christians know — that love is much more than the movie magic fantasy. “So we have this ideal of what love is and then these very, very unhelpful narratives of love. And they’re everywhere. They’re in movies and songs…But if you say to people, “Look, love is a painful, poignant, touching attempt by two flawed individuals to try and meet each other’s needs in situations of gross uncertainty and ignorance about who they are and who the other person is, but we’re going to do our best,” that’s a much more generous starting point. So the acceptance of ourselves as flawed creatures seems to me what love really is. Love is at its most necessary when we are weak, when we feel incomplete, and we must show love to one another at those points.” He adds, “What we call a love story is really just the beginning of a love story, but we leave that out. But most of us, we’re interested in long-term relationships. We’re not just interested in the moment that gets us into love; we’re interested in the survival of love over time.”
This kind of energetic love is the fabric of social connection, de Botton says, and “a functioning society requires — well, it requires two things that, again, just don’t sound very normal, but they require love and politeness. And by “love” I mean a capacity to enter imaginatively into the minds of people with whom you don’t immediately agree, and to look for the more charitable explanations for behavior which doesn’t appeal to you and which could seem plain wrong.” To love one another, as family members or friends or parts of the same social world, requires work, energy and a sense of humility.
* * *
1 John 4:7-21
Love on the Page
“Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another,” 1 John tells us. We usually think of love as something for people, or even pets, and Somik Raha takes it even further. He remembers, “Growing up in India, I had a hard time with most of my subjects, especially math. One day, after looking at my grades, my father had a heart-to-heart chat with me. He said, “The way to crack your subjects is to fall in love with them. When you start loving what you are learning, it will no longer look like work. Everything will fall in place after that. Just fall in love.” I was in sixth grade around then, and decided to take him seriously and literally said, “I love you” to my math textbook.”
Loving the math book changed something for him. “Then, something strange happened. I actually fell in love. I started enjoying the mystery behind each geometric question, soaking in it, and experiencing joy when I was able to solve it. Over the years, it got to a point where I would finish all the exercises in the textbook in a day and repeat it the next day and the day after. I would be thrilled to get an unknown question so I could soak in it and enjoy its mystery. Along with this head-over-heels love, my grades started improving. When I finished tenth grade, I had scored 99% in math.”
Somik Raha started to apply this principle of love in other places, first with history, which soon came alive for him, then English grammar. “I was convinced that one just could not love English grammar. But trying it there, I developed a love for writing which continues to this day. This philosophy completely transformed my life, improved my grades, and most importantly, made me simply stop caring about grades and actually enjoy learning.”
“Love one another” is meaningful advice for all parts of life.
* * *
John 15:1-8
Vine and Branches
The late civil rights warrior and member of Congress John Lewis recalls his training in non-violence before he set out to be part of the civil rights protests of the 1960’s. The training evoked Jesus’ instruction to abide in him, so we can bear much fruit. Reflecting on the truth that we thrive when rooted in God, Lewis said in an interview, “First of all, you have to grow. It’s just not something that is natural. You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. And in the religious sense, in the moral sense, you can say in the bosom of every human being, there is a spark of the divine. So you don’t have a right as a human to abuse that spark of the divine in your fellow human being.” In their training, Lewis and the other students would experience people yelling at them, hitting them, pouring water on them and calling them names, and work to remain calm.
Lewis said, “We, from time to time, would discuss if you see someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person, you know, years ago that person was an innocent child, innocent little baby. And so what happened? Something go wrong? Did the environment? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? So you try to appeal to the goodness of every human being and you don’t give up. You never give up on anyone.” He tried to maintain the connection with people who were being aggressive by keeping eye contact with them, understanding that they were all branches on the same vine, no matter what kind of violence was happening.
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:Acts 8:26-40
What prevents acceptance?
Philip’s encounter with the eunuch revolves around the Ethiopian’s curious and brave questions. The every-day reality faced by the eunuch is that he was not only a foreigner and a person of color (literally translated, he was a “burnt face”), he was also sexual minority and also a person of great power. In the end, however, he would have been excluded from participating in the religious rituals to which he obviously felt drawn. His curiosity leads him to ask Philip, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
It’s a question worthy of the church’s consideration. For example, LGTBQ activists have raised concerns about the growing anti-LGBTQ legislation under consideration by state governments. David Alphonso, president of the Human Rights Campaign, recently said that the number of bills targeting transgender youth is “unprecedented,” and that 2021 was on track to “become the worst year for state legislative attacks against LGBTQ people in history.”
Several Catholic leaders, including a bishop and an archbishop, signed a letter condemning discrimination against transgender persons, even though the church itself has a less progressive view of LGTQ inclusion. “We are commanded to respect the full dignity and humanity in every individual, and to be people of justice, mercy and compassion,” the letter reads, adding that “It should alarm all Catholics that individuals who are transgender experience disproportionate rates of discrimination, harassment, and violence — violence that is often fatal, and that overwhelming affects Black and Brown individuals.”
Acceptance of LGTQ persons has grown “radically” over the past thirteen or so years, according to Religion in Public. “From the reports of our survey respondents, American religion has rapidly changed its orientation toward LGBTQ Americans, becoming more accepting. This finding is in accord with noted shifts in religious elite calls for LGBTQ acceptance, even among some evangelicals.
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
Discrimination against LGBTQ youth
Researchers from the Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth, have shown that LGBTQ persons under 25 face workplace discrimination at alarming rates.
“When things are going bad, they end up going worse for folks who are trans and non-binary,” said Dr. Amy Green, vice president of research at The Trevor Project. “In terms of things like workplace discrimination, the number overall is quite high. But the differences between LGBTQ who are trans and non-binary compared to those who are cisgender is striking, with 61% of transgender youth who are employed saying that they've experienced discrimination compared to under 30% of those who are cisgender. That's a really big number, showing more than half are more likely than not to experience it.”
* * *
Acts 8:26-40
Hiding in plain sight
It didn’t take long for Philip to find the Ethiopian. It turns out he seemed to be hiding in plain sight, out in his carriage somewhere on a stretch of road leading out of Jerusalem. Likewise, it turns out that the percentage of gay persons living in rural America is much higher than conventional wisdom has always believed. The assumption, says Colin Johnson, professor of gender studies at the University of Indiana, has always been that “queer history begins at the city gates.”
Not so, according to a recent study. About 3-5% of rural adults and 10% of rural youth identify as LGBTQ, or roughly 3.8 million persons. Johnson has studied the histories of queer persons in rural areas. He notes that many times the perception that homosexuality is an urban phenomenon requires rethinking. Johnson discovered that by sidestepping stereotypes of gay culture, many elderly rural residents came to a “radical reconceptualization of the people they knew when they were younger.”
Fairly soon, says Johnson, people began making connections.
“People living with their best friends their entire lives, these arrangements that were familiar in small areas, they didn’t look like the self-conscious, politically actualized gay and lesbian identity that many people were familiar with. But they were intimate, same-sex relationships that everybody seemed to recognize even if they didn’t have the terminology to describe it.”
* * *
John 15:1-8
If you remain in me…
When the pandemic arrived, congregations were forced to adapt and change in ways many had either previously resisted or not considered. In some cases, the changes produced a surge in creativity and adaptation. But how much the church has changed is not yet clear. It is clear, however, that previous understandings of Jesus’ metaphor of the vine and branches in John 15 may need to be reconsidered.
What does it mean to abide in the church in 2021?
- There’s some evidence from the evangelical-leaning Barna group that suggests that approximately 32% of “practicing Christians” have not attended their church’s streaming or online worship. About 34% indicate they have streamed other church’s services — a sort of digital “church hopping.”
- Some 22% of church goers have stopped going to either in-person or online worship.
- Meanwhile, many pastors are reporting increases in church participation. The Rev. Beth Merrill Neel, a Presbyterian pastor in Oregon, shared that when she began offering a service of daily prayer on Facebook the response was “kind of overwhelming.” She said that, “as people join in and they comment, ‘so and so is here, and so and so is here,’” she said about viewers being able to see others join in the live daily prayer broadcast, ‘it’s like, oh, my gosh, the church is still out there.’
John 15:1-8
Bearing the fruit of mutuality
While we have often focused on the negatives of the pandemic, a British scholar of loneliness has noted that there have been significant benefits of the increased isolation. Fay Bound Alberti reports her findings in a recent posting on “The Conversation.”
“Yet something quite profound,” she says, “is also happening in terms of our relationships with people we don’t know. Despite negativity about the societal impacts of Covid-19 — from increased levels of loneliness to the limitations of social media — we are seeing some positive and unexpected results, including widespread outpourings of charity, togetherness and empathy for complete strangers. We might even be seeing a grassroots redefinition of what “community” means in the 21st century.
Alberti points to the many places where mutuality has flourished, including volunteers in Wuhan, China, who worked to provide assistance to care workers, helplines established to provide personal protective equipment in the United States by Indian Americans, and volunteers in the UK who went searching for vulnerable persons and others at special risk.
“These forms of community action are self-organised,” Alberti says, “and dependent on the same social media networks that have previously been condemned as antithetical to real relationships. And they seem to be spreading, virus-like, between cities and countries.”
* * *
John 15:1-8
When connections fail
Joanna Weiss, editor of Experience Magazine, notes that there is a deep desire for the fruitful experiences of connection that has kept many of us together throughout the pandemic.
We’ve needed each other, and that’s good to know. One of the hardest things about Covid has been the way it rendered friendship dangerous — so many transmissions springing from in-person gatherings, as friends came together despite the directives. You can condemn all of those people as cavalier about public health. Or you could see their lapses as a feature of humanity.
We’ve learned, this past year, that connection isn’t the same when it’s remote. And while many of us have broken the rules at least once or twice, we should acknowledge the lengths we’ve gone to see each other in relative safety.
Weiss’ yearning may be compared to the observations Jesus makes about the interdependence of the fruit and the vine in John 15. She yearns for the physical experiences of friendship, concluding “I want to live dangerously with my besties. I want to double-dip in the guacamole. I want to sip your cocktail to see if I like it, too. I want to scream together into a karaoke microphone. I’ll pick the first song: “With a Little Help From My Friends.”
* * * * * *
WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship:
One: All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to God.
All: All the families of the nations shall worship before God.
One: For dominion belongs to our God.
All: God rules over the nations.
One: Future generations will be told about God.
All: We will proclaim God’s deliverance to a people yet unborn.
OR
One: The Creator of us all invites us into the divine presence.
All: With joy we say yes to God's gracious invitation.
One: The arms of God's welcome are open to us all.
All: Thanks be to our loving parent-God.
One: Share the good news of God's welcome to all.
All: We will invite everyone to come with us to God.
Hymns and Songs:
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
UMH: 89
H82: 376
PH: 464
AAHH: 120
NNBH: 40
NCH: 4
CH: 2
LBW: 551
ELW: 836
W&P: 59
AMEC: 75
STLT: 29
From All That Dwell Below the Skies
UMH: 101
H82: 380
PH: 229
NCH: 27
CH: 49
LBW: 550
AMEC: 69
STLT: 381
He Leadeth Me: O Blessed Thought
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395
All My Hope Is Firmly Grounded
UMH: 132
H82: 665
NCH: 408
CH: 88
ELW: 757
Now the Green Blade Riseth
UMH: 311
H82: 204
NCH: 238
CH: 230
LBW: 148
ELW: 379
W&P: 311
STLT: 266
Christ Is Alive
UMH: 318
H82: 182
PH: 108
LBW: 363
ELW: 389
W&P: 312
Renew: 300
Jesus Calls Us
UMH: 398
H82: 549/550
NNBH: 183
NCH: 171/172
CH: 337
LBW: 494
ELW: 696
W&P: 345
AMEC: 238
I Am Thine, O Lord
UMH: 419
AAHH: 387
NNBH: 202
NCH: 455
CH: 601
W&P: 408
AMEC: 283
Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life
UMH: 427
H82: 609
PH: 408
NCH: 543
CH: 665
LBW: 429
ELW: 719
W&P: 591
AMEC: 561
Christ for the World We Sing
UMH: 568
H82: 537
W&P: 561
AMEC: 565
Renew: 299
I'm Gonn'a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing
CCB: 22
He Is Exalted
CCB: 30
Renew: 238
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
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
ELW: 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 is the giver of all life:
Grant us the grace to see the value in all people
and to share with them your great love;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the giver of life. Each person we meet has been created and is loved by you. Help us to see that value in others and to share with them your great love. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our trying to keep your love for ourselves and not share it with others.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have created us all out of your love and made us in your image and yet we look on one another and judge one better than another. We look on the outside and condemn what is on the inside. Our own follies and sins we readily overlook while holding others to a strict account for their behavior. Forgive us and give us your sight that we may see all people as your beloved children. Amen.
One: God is our beloved parent who readily forgives us as we are invited to forgive others.
Prayers of the People
Blessed and holy are you, O God, creator of all. You made each of us in your image, shaped out of your love.
(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. You have created us all out of your love and made us in your image and yet we look on one another and judge one better than another. We look on the outside and condemn what is on the inside. Our own follies and sins we readily overlook while holding others to a strict account for their behavior. Forgive us and give us your sight that we may see all people as your beloved children.
We give you thanks for our creation and for your Spirit that fills us with life. We thank you for your constant love and grace that surrounds us day by day. We thank you for those who have shared your love with us when we are unlovable.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our need and especially for those who are pushed away by others and feel unloved and unlovable. We pray for those who struggle with who they are and wonder about their own worth. We offer to your healing presence those who suffer in mind, body, or spirit. We pray for those who have allowed hatred and prejudice to block your loving presence from their hearts.
(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 Our Father 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
Play "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things does not belong" using a group of object (or pictures of objects) that are obviously different and yet share characteristics at a larger level. A line up of cats and one dog. A line up of houses and one tent. A group of blue marbles and one red marble. We can see the differences and say one does not belong but then we can look again and see that they all belong. We just need to expand the way we look. All of the cats and the dog are animals or pets or furry. The houses and the tents are places to live, to be out of the rain. The one marble is a different color but it is still a marble. We often look at people and see differences but God looks and sees God's children. God invites us to see each other as part of God's family. We all belong. Even if we are different.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMONSRunning to Keep Up
by Katy Stenta
Acts 8:26-40
Supplies: Toy Car, Two Men Figures to represent Ethiopian and Philip, Blue string/ribbon to represent water
Tell the story of The Ethiopian Eunuch
Lay the Philip Figure Down as if he is asleep. Set the car a little ways apart and the string further down the road.
“This is Philip; he is a disciple of Jesus. One night when he was asleep — a messenger angel of God comes and wakes him up and tells him to go.” (Stand Philip up.)
“He sends him besides a chariot, which was how people got around before cars. Philip RAN to catch up with the vehicle to see the man inside” (Move the car along, and have the Philip figure catch up.)
“Then the man inside stopped the car and said he was trying to read and learn about God. He asked if Philip knew what the book about God meant. Philip said he could help, so the Eunuch stopped the vehicle.” (Have the vehicle stop.)
“Philip must have been surprised to see this foreign person, who was in between being a girl and a boy, who would not be allowed in Temple to learn about God, but he started to explain who Jesus was and how God so loved the world that he sent Jesus Christ to save it. It was then they happened on a river.” (Drive the car. Put figures inside or pretend to and put them away for a minute. Drive toward the river/ribbon.)
“The eunuch said, 'This is amazing! What is to prevent me from being baptized? And he and Philip went down to the river and Philip baptized the Eunuch.” (Stop the car at the river and take the two figures to the water. Show Philip baptizing the eunuch in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.)
“And then the Holy Spirit miraculously whisked Philip away the Eunuch rejoiced because he was baptized.” (Whisk Philip away and “voop” him to disaapper. Have the eunuch say “Hallelujah! I’ve been baptized!” and jump up and down.)
What was special about this story? (Baptism, angels, God calling Phililp.)
Have you been baptized? (Encourage both those who say yes or no that baptism is very special.)
Do you think people rejoiced when you were baptized? Why? (Probably yes, talk about how baptism is like a birthday in God’s family. God celebrates you as a part of God’s family.”)
Who does God want us to baptize? (Everyone!)
Prayer: Repeat after me
Dear God,
Thank you
for calling us
to baptize and be baptized
help us
to rejoice
with everyone
who is part
of God’s family.
Amen.
* * *
With God We Can Be Fruitful
by Katy Stenta
John 15:1-18
Props: Bring grapes on the stem. (You may need to cut some in quarters to pass out to preschoolers for safety.)
Hand out grapes to each participant. Ask them to leave them on the dish for a minute.
Read John 15:1-8.
Notice how each grape is attached to each other? How are they attached? (sticks, stems, vines are possible answers)
What does it mean that God is the vine and we are the branches? (Point out the thick and thin stems.)
If the main stem is God and we are the branches, do you see what we make together? (Fruit!)
God says that we need each other to make our lives better. We need God and we need a community. Fruit means good things. Can you think of some good things we as the church community do together? (Have some mission and ministry examples if no one answers.)
Let’s read it one more time, while we eat our grapes? (Pass out sliced grapes as needed.)
John 15:1-8...
Amen!
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, May 2, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 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.
