Living Beyond Fear
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
For November 11, 2018:
Living Beyond Fear
by Tom Willadsen
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
In the News
Saturday, October 27 is another day that Americans will remember. (Or not, perhaps we’re numb to mass shootings now.) This one, carried out at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, has been described as the deadliest attack on Jews in America in history. At this writing, (Wednesday, October 31) 11 people are dead, six others were injured, two of whom remain hospitalized.
In addition to being profoundly anti-Semitic, it appears the shooter was fearful of immigrants and targeted Tree of Life because of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), which resettled refugees in the United States.
“In a post on the social network Gab, (which is a haven for white nationalists and others on the alt-right. Gab was shut down for a week shortly after the shootings. The site went back up this past Saturday evening.) the accused shooter, Robert Bowers, 46, linked to a directory of synagogues participating in a HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) event, National Refugee Shabbat, saying he “appreciated” the list. As part of the elaborate anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to which he subscribed -- which prosecutors say motivated his crime -- Bowers claimed that HIAS was working to bring people to the United States to do violence.
HIAS is one of the voluntary agencies that works with the federal government, as do Church World Service and World Relief, to settle refugees in the United States.
“As our president likes to say, ‘We used to help refugees because they were Jewish but now we help refugees because we’re Jewish,’” (Bill) Swersey, a spokesman for HIAS, said.
HIAS is also involved in immigration causes around the world through its 10 international offices. The recent issues at the US-Mexico border and a migrant caravan have also become part of their work.
He said the humanitarian aid group doesn’t believe that Bowers called it out because of its Jewish roots but because it is assisting immigrants in finding refuge in the United States.
“I think what [Bowers] was responding to is the idea of the Jewish community supporting other people coming to live here,” Swersey said. “This is an elevation of the issue of anti-immigration, and it’s a concern to us and should be a concern to all Americans.”
Immigration has been a hot button topic as the mid-term elections approach. There is a “caravan” of people fleeing violence in Central American countries, headed to the United States. While there appears to be no outside organizing force to the caravan, it’s obvious that people are fleeing desperate situations and seeking asylum in the United States. The caravan has been estimated to contain 5,000 to 7,000 people. Mexico has not allowed caravan members to enter Mexico, neither to seek asylum in Mexico, nor to travel north through Mexico to seek asylum in the United States.
Fear of “the Other” is being fed by rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims. The caravan has been called “invaders.” Some have alleged, with no confirmation to date, that there are Middle Easterners and ISIS members in the caravan.
President Trump has sent 5,200 federal troops to support the work of the existing border security officers. The federal troops do not have the authority to apprehend people crossing into the United States. As commander-in-chief he is asserting the need of these troops to protect and defend the United States.
This is an excessive, and in many people’s opinion, politically-motivated effort to project strength to a public whose fears have been nurtured, not reduced, by elected officials.
President Trump stressed in his campaign that he would build a wall along the Mexican border, and make Mexico pay for it. While this was a powerful symbol it would not have the effect that the president desired. 60% of people who are in the United States without documentation entered legally. (Wisdom, “Walk in Their Shoes,” October 30, 2018) 100% of the September 11 terrorists entered the country legally.
One final fact, preventing people from entering the United States to seek asylum is a violation of both federal and international law. The notion that being tough on immigrants out of respect for the rule of law belies the fact that there are certain laws that the current administration has no interest in following.
In the Bible
In this climate of fear of The Other, the story of Ruth offers an alternative to fear. The preacher will need to give some background for today’s verses to be understood. Ruth, her sister-in-law Orpah, and their mother-in-law Naomi were all widowed. Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, from whence she came. Orpah decided to stay in Moab. Ruth was determined to stay with Naomi, even though that meant she had to leave her family, and culture of origin. Ruth got work gleaning in a barley field. The practice of gleaning is described in Leviticus 19:9 “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.” Other passages in the Torah that require the landowner not harvest to the edges of his field, nor pick every last grape from his orchard. This was a kind of welfare program for needy people.
Ruth happened to glean in Boaz’s field. She worked steadily and got Boaz’s attention. Boaz told his staff not to molest or bother Ruth, presumably such treatment was common toward woman who needed to glean to support their families. Boaz even told them to leave some stalks of grain on the ground for Ruth to get.
As the third chapter begins -- and the entire third chapter is part of this week’s reading -- Naomi advises her daughter-in-law about how to make herself known to Boaz. Boaz was going to have a fine time that night, winnowing the harvest, drinking and sleeping in piles of newly-threshed barley. Naomi tells Ruth to dress up and uncover Boaz’s feet in the dark after he’s sound asleep. (“Feet” is a frequent euphemism in the Hebrew scriptures for what the Monty Python crew called “naughty bits,” which is, itself, a euphemism.) Ruth does as she’s told, and Boaz recognizes that she is a “worthy woman,” and tells her to sit tight. While she has effectively offered herself in marriage to Boaz, there is another male who has a closer claim to Ruth than he does. Before dawn, he sends Ruth home with six “measures” of barley. It’s impossible to know how much barley this was. If one assumes the standard unit of weight, a seah, it would come to about 15 bushels. That would be an extraordinary amount of grain to carry in one’s cloak. Suffice it to say, Boaz sent Ruth home with as much grain as she could carry.
The part of chapter four omitted from today’s lectionary reading covers the public exchange between Boaz and Ruth’s husband’s nearer relative. After a little drama, the story ends happily and Boaz and Ruth married. Do not overlook the remaining verses. While it is Ruth who gives birth, it is Naomi who became the baby’s nurse (4:6) and the ladies of the neighborhood said, “A son has been born to Naomi.” One could say that the book could be called “Naomi.”
One final note, in what Christians call the Old Testament, the book of Ruth follows the book of Judges. This makes sense because Ruth begins “In the days when the judges ruled.” We consider it a historic book. Tradition has it that Ruth is read in its entirety on the second day of Shavuot, or Pentecost, the celebration of the firstfruits of the harvest. The sequence of the books that Jewish people use puts Ruth after Proverbs. Proverbs ends with a lengthy ode to “the capable wife” or “the worthy woman,” the very term that Boaz used to describe Ruth in 3:11! Ruth can be read as the embodiment of the ideal wife. (Next time you’re asked to lead a Bible study for the women’s group at your church, do Proverbs 31:10-31.)
In the Sermon
Ruth is the first convert to Judaism. She was a foreigner who was passionately determined to stay with (cleave unto) Naomi, her mother-in-law. Ruth left her home and put herself at risk. She was fortunate/blessed to find her way to Boaz’s harvest field, and Boaz noticed the foreign woman. She was a conspicuously dedicated worker.
Compare Ruth to the migrants in one of several caravans heading to the United States from Central America. These people left everything because of their fear of continuing to live in peril. (Check this week’s secondary article for a link between the migrants and the poor woman who tosses her two pennies into the offering.)
Boaz and the Bethlehemites (I checked, this is the correct term) could have feared and rejected Ruth, but they did not. She worked hard and she was attentive to Naomi, one of their own. Boaz embraced Ruth -- in at least two senses -- and so Boaz’s son, Obed, was not a “purebred” Bethlehmite. But wait, there’s more! Obed was Jesse’s father, Jesse was David’s father, and David was the best king. We call Bethlehem “the City of David.”
In the prologue to Matthew’s gospel, where the generations prior to Christ’s birth are laid out, Ruth is one of only four women mentioned. Each of the four is in some ways scandalous. Tamar was Judah’s daughter-in-law and the mother of his sons. Rahab was the prostitute who hid the spies Joshua had sent ahead of his invasion of the Promised Land. She recognized God’s power in the military conquests of the Israelites and asked to be spared when Joshua attacked Jericho. (You know the song.) Oh, and Rahab was Boaz’s mother. The fourth woman mentioned is “the wife of Uriah,” that is Bathsheba. David arranged to have Uriah killed in battle and committed adultery with Bathsheba. Bathsheba was Solomon’s mother.
One could argue that David’s lineage was not completely or “purely” royal. What would have happened if fearing Ruth, because she’s a foreigner, kept her from marrying Boaz? What if she had not had the courage to stand by her mother-in-law?
It is perfectly in keeping with Judaism to welcome and include people from other lands. The Ten Commandments explicitly includes “resident aliens” in the commandment to observe the Sabbath. In Deuteronomy’s version of the Ten Commandments, the people are reminded that they were once slaves whom God set free. Therefore the people should not be slaves to their work, but rather be able to trust the Lord to provide for them one day a week. The commandment to keep Sabbath is a commandment to trust the Lord, not to live in fear that one will not be provided for.
Ruth’s faith, her ability to risk leaving everything that was familiar to her, is like the faith of the poor woman at the temple. This kind of faith, one could call it “perilous faith,” is the antidote, the response to fear.
Is there a way we as a nation or as a society can live beyond fear? Can we find a way to trust one another? To reclaim the Christian practice of hospitality, or make our national identity one where were we truly are a nation of immigrants? It will require the courage to love. Are we capable of that?
SECOND THOUGHTS
Flight To Hope
by Dean Feldmeyer
Mark 12:38-44, Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
Every time I catch myself doing it I feel like a fool.
I’ve just finished a 48-minute workout on the elliptical machine at the gym.1 Now I have to stop at the supermarket and pick up a couple of things on my way home. I get to the parking lot and spend fifteen minutes driving around the lot, looking for a parking space that is close to the door so I don’t have to walk too far.
You get the irony, right? I’ve just spent 48 minutes of my life exercising at the gym but I refuse to park in a spot that will require me to walk an extra fifteen feet. Yeah, it’s nuts, I know.
So, it’s no wonder that I’m flummoxed when I hear about people who live in a country that is so horrible that they are willing to leave everything they have or know, their friends and their families, their homes and their histories, and walk 1,595 miles to a future with no guarantees or promises to a country that doesn’t want them.2
I mean, I can’t imagine walking 1,595 miles for anything. I can’t imagine anything that’s so bad that I would dump my entire life and take off on that hike. I always figured the Exodus story in the Bible was kind of a one and done sort of deal.
Who knew we’d be seeing that story being played out over and over again in our own time with our own president playing the part of Edom. (Numbers 20:14-20)
Anywhere But Here
But is the comparison a valid one? Are the members of the caravan as bad off as the ancient Hebrews in Egypt? Since the current caravan originated in Honduras, that’s the country I chose to look at. It isn’t pretty.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras, home to about 8.25 million people, has by far the highest homicide rate of all countries in the world. Its unparalleled average murder rate is 90.4 murders per 100,000 people. About one out of every 1,000 people is murdered every year.3
The gross national income, per capita, is $2,150, so 60.9% of the population lives in abject poverty. It is the second-poorest country in Central America, and “suffers from extraordinarily unequal distribution of income,” and rampant underemployment.
Widespread gang violence, orchestrated mainly by two gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, fuels the instability and suffering. Criminals have extorted Hondurans into paying an arbitrary “war tax” for their survival, and those who can’t pay often are killed.
“There are no jobs, no justice, no laws in Honduras,” said 32-year-old Karen Gallo, one of the migrants on the caravan.4
They are poor, desperate, tired, and hungry.
There is not one scintilla of evidence that they are the disease ridden, violent, criminal gang members that some have accused them of being. And it makes little sense that middle eastern terrorists would make their way to Honduras so they could walk 1,500-3,000 miles to get into the United States hidden in a caravan that has been under intense media scrutiny since it left Honduras.
The truth is that these people are desperate and afraid and there is nothing that can happen to them at the American border that is worse than what they will face when they get home.
News reporters identify them as, perhaps naively, optimistic that the United States is a place of compassion and kindness where they will be given a chance to live in relative safety and make lives for themselves and their families.
But if they can’t get into the United States, they will take anywhere else but the country from which they have come.
To put it in the words of poker players and gamblers, they have gone “all in” and they can’t go back.
The Widow Goes All In
In today’s gospel lesson from Mark, we have the familiar story of the “widow’s mite.”
Normally we use this story as an opportunity to guilt and cajole our congregations into emulating the sacrificial giving of the widow. Look, we say. She, out of faith, is giving all that she has. How many of you lot have faith like that?
No, I didn’t think so.
Ok, maybe we aren’t that brutal. Maybe we just let the implication lay there and make its own point. She gave all she had. Huh, imagine that. Boy, that takes a lot of faith.
But maybe there’s another way of looking at this story.
Let’s be honest. It’s just plain crazy to give all the money you have to the church. Your food money, your rent money, your clothing money, all of it? Really? No, that’s crazy.
Or, maybe it’s not so much crazy as it is desperate.
When I was a teenager my dad took my brother and me to a huge tent revival where a nationally renowned revivalist and faith healer was going to be preaching. Dad was not a believer in such nonsense (his word) but he wanted us to see it up close because he was absolutely sure that it was on its way out. The world was moving toward enlightenment so quickly, he said, that religious superstition would soon be a thing of the past.
So, we went and we watched and what we saw was, by and large, very poor, very desperate people putting money in ever present fried chicken buckets in the hope that these “signs of faith” would heal them of the diseases and disabilities that modern science had not been able to cure.
They were, in a word, desperate.
They were so desperate, in fact, that they were willing to invest the last dollars many of them had in the desperate hope that their “faith” would bring forth a miracle. They were investing their valuables, the resources with which they might have fed their families or paid for medicine, in a system that was tilted against them from the moment they walked through the flap in the tent.
Jesus has already told us in the introductory verses of this pericope that the temple system was a crooked, twisted system that made the wealthy wealthier and the poor poorer.
And I cannot help but wonder when he sees that woman put her last two cents into that system he isn’t sad. I have to wonder if he didn’t shake his head with sympathy and disgust for a system that rewards the rich for giving out of their abundance and snatches coins from the hand of a poor widow who goes all in, in the desperate hope that even though it hasn’t changed her life up to now, maybe this time it will.
Author Scott Hoezee, from the Center For Excellence in Preaching observes:
“Whatever the specifics, it appears that the religious leaders were doing something that was making the already-vulnerable widow population feel obligated to give to the temple more than they frankly could afford. That’s why when Jesus then sees a widow giving away the last two coins she had to rub together, he sees in that not first of all an example of good stewardship in action (and so something that we should all try to imitate). What Jesus saw was a glaring example of how far off the beam the whole temple enterprise had gotten. This woman felt obligated to give away what little she had and although that revealed how earnest she was, it was an earnestness that had been manipulated. So when Jesus says, “That’s all she had to live on,” he said it with exasperation in his voice. She should not have done that. She should not have been told to do that.”
We can choose to see those Honduran refugees in the caravan as enemies, as threats to our safety and security. Or, like Jesus sees the widow, we can see them as they really are, as poor, desperate people who are up against a system that is canted against them and determined to keep them desperate and poor.
We can see them throwing their last two cents in with the caravan, hoping that maybe, unlike all the others promises they’ve been given -- by the church, by the government, by other countries -- this one will actually pay off in some way that will help them and their families.
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1 48 minutes is the approximate length of one episode of The Walking Dead.
2 1595 miles is the distance from Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, to Brownsville, Texas, the closest American city. Distance to San Diego, the farthest, is 2,879 miles.
3 https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=21167
4 https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/30/americas/migrant-caravan-countries-snapshots/index.html
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ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
Ruth 3:1-5; Psalm 146
Ministry / Testimony/ Leadership / Social Activism / Prophecy
Nelson Mandela’s memorial service was held at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on Tuesday, December 10, 2013. The main speaker at the service was South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma who served nine years in office. Though his administration was corrupt and riddled with scandal, the 2,274 words he spoke at Mandela’s funeral are worth recalling.
After the customary political introductions, Zuman opened his address with these words:
South Africans sing a popular freedom song about former President Nelson Mandela. We sing that he is one of a kind, that there is no one quite like him. Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela akekho ofana naye. The song is one of the most accurate descriptions of this global icon who is the founding President of a free and democratic South Africa and also the former President of the oldest liberation movement in the continent, the ANC. His passing has marked an unprecedented outpouring of grief across the world. Yet, it is grief, tinged with admiration and celebration. Everyone has had a Mandela moment, when this world icon has touched their lives.
The hymn akekho ofana naye, which is sung in Zulu, was obviously familiar to the South Africans, but the words remain mysterious to us. The lyrics of akekho ofana naye are sung as follows:
Akekho Ofana Nojesu (There’s no one like Jesus)
Akekho ofana naye (There’s no one like Him)
Akekho Ofana Nojesu (There’s no one like Jesus)
Akekho ofana naye (There’s no one like Him)
Siyahamba siyahamba akekho akekho (I have traveled everywhere, no one)
Siyajika siyajika akekho akekho (I have looked everywhere, no one)
Siyafuna siyafuna akekho akekho (I have searched everywhere, no one)
Akekho afana naye (There is no one like Him)
Shortly after complimenting Mandela with the song akekho ofana naye, in the tradition of South Africa, in the rest of his speech he referred to Mandela by his tribal name Madiba. Zuma spoke Madiba of the great and fearless activist for freedom and human rights:
Courageous leaders are able to abandon their narrow concerns for bigger and all-embracing dreams, even if those dreams come at a huge price. Madiba embodied this trait. He was a fearless freedom fighter who refused to allow the brutality of the apartheid state to stand in the way of the struggle for the liberation of his people. Being a lawyer, he understood the possible consequences of his actions. But he also knew that no unjust system could last forever. He said at an ANC Youth League conference in 1951; “True, the struggle will be a bitter one. Leaders will be deported, imprisoned, and even shot. “The government will terrorize the people and their leaders in an effort to halt the forward march; ordinary forms of organization will be rendered impossible. But the spirit of the people cannot be crushed…until full victory is won.” The struggle became Madiba’s life.
* * *
Ruth 3:1-5
Delilah Rene Luke is the host of the radio song and talk show that is simply known as Delilah. The show is nationally syndicated. The format is a caller shares her or his personal problems on the air. Then Delilah takes three minutes to offer some common-sense advice and comforting words. She then selects a song that either reflects the caller’s mood or brings some sort of emotional comfort. The program which begins at 7pm continues through midnight. Delilah has 8 million listeners.
In October 2018, Delilah published her book titled One Heart at a Time. In the books’ introduction Delilah offers this reason for writing her book:
Our world is trouped on so many fronts, and it’s hard to be up against forces so enormous and powerful when you are one person, one heart, trying to effect change. Sometimes I feel like a tiny mouse facing down a rhinoceros. So how do we change the world? The answer: one heart at a time. I’ll start by sharing my heart with you.
She went on to write:
When your life comes into harmony with the Lord’s plan for you, and people around you start to notice the change, guess what? They’ll want to know what you know. So you’ll share your stories, too, soften hearts, open eyes, and change the world with me, one heart at a time.
* * *
Mark 12:42-44
Stewardship / Blessings / Appreciation
Sandra O’Connor we the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. She was nominated by President Ronald Reagan and took office in 1981 and served until her retirement in 2006. One of the reasons she chose to retire is to care for her husband, John, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. He died in 2009. In an open letter, published in October 2018, Sandra O’Connor announced that she had Alzheimer’s. She wrote that many people were asking about her current status and activities, since she has not lectured publicly for the past two years. She decided it was important to “be open about these changes.” In her open letter to the public she wrote:
While in the final chapter of my life with dementia may be trying, nothing has diminished my gratitude and deep appreciation for the countless blessings in my life…As a young cowgirl growing up in the Arizona desert, I could never have imagined that one day I would become the first woman justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
* * *
Mark 12:41-44
Stewardship
In October 2018 the Mega Millions lottery reached a payout of $1.6 billion. That meant there were 25 rollovers without a single winning ticket being drawn. For $2 your ticket has to match the six numbers of the ticket drawn by the lottery association. There are 302 million possible winning combinations. Your chance of winning can be compared to being a single individual in the entire United States population who was randomly selected. The odds of winning are about the same as rolling a die and getting a one, eleven times in a row. The reason people play, according to Jane Risen, a professor at the University of Chicago, is if you don’t play there’s the “sense of regret to not have been the only one not playing.” Well, there is one individual who has no sense of regret. The winning ticket was sold at a KC Mart Simpsonville, about 90 miles northwest of Columbia, South Carolina.
* * *
Mark 12:41-44
Stewardship
In October 2018 the Mega Millions lottery reached a payout of $1.6 billion. That meant there were 25 rollovers without a single winning ticket being drawn. For $2 your ticket has to match the six numbers of the ticket drawn by the lottery association. There are 302 million possible winning combinations. Your chance of winning can be compared to being a single individual in the entire United States population who was randomly selected. The odds of winning are about the same as rolling a die and getting a one, eleven times in a row. Lottery official have continually changed the rule for winning, creating more and more jackpots that approach a billion dollars. This may sound good as the jackpots get bigger more people buy tickets. In one billion dollar jackpot, 208 million tickets were sold. In California, at lunch hours, the height of ticket sales, 200 tickets were being sold every second for a billion-dollar prize. This may sound great for lottery officials, except, less tickets are being sold for the regular daily jackpots. A $400 million jackpot hardly seems worth bothering with as one waits for the billion-dollar prize to be challenged.
* * *
Ruth 4:15; Psalm 127:1; Hebrews 9:26
Obedience / Vain (selfish) living / Judgement (on lifestyle)
The “100 deadliest days.” Memorial Day to Labor Day. School is out and teenagers are driving more. Vacationers are taking long road trips. And more people will die from traffic deaths during this period than any other time during the year. There are many reasons for this, but the overriding cause is driver distraction. Driver distractions, such as texting and using a cellphone, contribute to 58.5% of the fatal accidents. In a cautionary statement, Jennifer Ryan, the AAA director of state realties, said in June 2016, “It’s no secret that teens are extremely connected to their cellphones.”
* * *
Mark 12:38-40
False Prophets / Hypocrites
On stage during Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, which was held at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg in December 2013, there was an interpreter signing for the deaf. For hours he interpreted the speakers, but the problem was that he did not know sign language. He just used childish motions as heads of state gave passionate speeches. Yet, no one stopped him. No one escorted him off the stage. Those who were deaf knew he was a fake, but were unable to get him removed from the stage. David Buxton, the CEO of the British Deaf Association said, “it was hours of complete nonsense.”
* * *
Ruth 4:13-17
Ministry / Compassion / Acceptance
Hawaii still has a Leprosy Colony of six patients. Hawaii suffered terrible diseases from merchant ships that travelled to the island from Asia in the early 1800s. Venereal disease, smallpox and typhoid killed tens of thousands. But as decades passed, new diseases were always arriving. One was leprosy. The state mandated that those who had leprosy were to be quarantined, falsely believing the ailment was highly contagious. In 1865 King Kamehameha V issued the decree titled “Act of Prevent the Spread of Leprosy.” A Leprosy Colony was established on the small island of Molokai. Over the decades more than 8,000 leprosy patients were banished to the 8,725-acre area. It was not until 1969 that the decree was abolished. In 2009, there were 16 total individuals who had leprosy, with six choosing to remain in the colony rather than join the outside world. There ages are from 73 to 92. President Obama, in 2009, signed legislation that a memorial be built to honor the 8,000 patients, listing all of their names.
* * *
Hebrews 9:27; Mark 12:38-4
Judgement
After the close of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011, People magazine did a review of its 25 years of broadcasting. The article highlighted those shows which were most memorial. One of the shows listed, with photograph, is Tom Cruise jumping up-and-down on a yellow chair declaring his love for Katie Holmes. People magazine labeled this incident as “possibly the greatest watercooler incident of all time.” In other words, Cruise’s actions were so absurd that everyone would talk about them for days and weeks to come. In fact, it could become one of the most remembered acts in the 25 years of filming The Oprah Winfrey Show.
* * *
Veterans’ Day
It was 71 years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and President Obama became the first siting president to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in May 2016. A visit to this historic but tragic site was on Obama’s agenda since he first took office. Mr. Obama’s visit to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park had all the pomp, ceremony and planned choreography of a state visit or a leader’s funeral. With thousands in attendance and much of Japan watching on TV, President Obama walked forward alone at the park and laid a wreath on a white pyramid. He paused before the memorial, his head bowed. Before travelling to Japan, Obama visited Vietnam as a sign of healing past wounds. In a speech that was delivered in a slow and deliberate cadence, Obama said, “Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-far past.” He went on to say of those who perished, “Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.”
From team member Mary Austin:
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
Grandmother Power
The architect of Ruth’s relationship with Boaz is her mother-in-law Naomi, and when they have a child, the women of the neighborhood proclaim the child as Naomi’s. In fact, he is, and without her vision and plans, this ancestor of David would not have come to be.
Grandmothers in our world are putting similar kinds of energy into a better world. Paola Gianturco writes, “Today’s grandmothers are different from mine. My grandmother lived a mile away. I played under her bushes where spring violets grew. She baked a dollop of meringue on a saltine cracker as a treat for me -- and prepared delicious Sunday dinners: chicken that my grandfather caught and vegetables that she grew in her garden. Her bathtub had feet and her phone had a party line. She folded Christmas wrappings to use again. She kept her money in a safe inside a kitchen cabinet.”
But now things are different. “Today, the majority of grandmothers in the United States are between the ages of 45 and 64, younger than they’ve ever been historically and too young to retire…They are also healthier, better educated -- and, because many work, better off than grandmothers have ever been…All that adds up to a lot of grandmother power!”
“Grandmothers are forming activist groups all over the world to tackle intractable issues: poverty, illiteracy, environmental degradation, disease, injustice and violence…In India, illiterate grandmothers who had learned solar engineering at the Barefoot College in Rajasthan brought light to 10,000 village households -- and everything changed. Midwives could see to deliver babies at night. Children no longer got black lung disease from studying by kerosene lamps. The Indian grandmothers returned to the school and taught grandmothers from 23 developing countries who returned home and installed solar electricity in 35,000 households all over the global south.”
Across the world, in Canada, “Eight thousand Canadian grandmothers stand in solidarity with African grandmothers who are raising children orphaned by AIDS. They have formed a partnership, the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, coordinated by the Stephen Lewis Foundation, which is based in Toronto. The Canadian grandmothers will do almost anything to earn money for their African counterparts: sell ice cream at the beach, cater weddings, create and sell crafts, and so much more. In the past six years, 240 Canadian grandmother groups have raised $16.5 million, enough to send continuous small cash infusions to grandmothers raising children orphaned by AIDS in 15 African countries.”
As Naomi knows, grandmother power is strong power!
* * *
Mark 12:38-44
Poverty and Wealth
As Jesus watches the poor widow put her last coins into the temple treasury, both extreme poverty and extreme wealth are visible in the scene. Lynne Twist has spent her career helping people align their money with their values, and she tells about an important lesson she learned about wealth and poverty from Mother Theresa.
Lynne Twist writes, “I was raised as a Catholic, and all through my life I was deeply inspired by Mother Teresa…In the 1970s when, as a young mother and wife, I began to fully embrace my personal commitment to end world hunger, I thought a lot about her and her work among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta and in places of hunger and poverty all over the world. On my first trip to India, as I felt overwhelmed by the horrific poverty that I saw, I thought about her and how she had placed herself in the middle of human suffering for her entire life, remaining a member of the community of the poorest of the poor even as she was celebrated by the most rich and powerful leaders of the world.” She decided to try to meet Mother Theresa, and a friend helped make the introduction.
When she met Mother Theresa, “she modestly described herself as ‘God’s Pencil,’ and told me that she could see in my eyes and by my work that I, too, was ‘God’s Pencil.’ This acknowledgement moved me deeply. In her presence, I felt an unconditional love and connectedness to the whole world so profound that I could not hold back my tears and so I spoke to her through them. We were deeply engaged in this intimate conversation when we were interrupted by a scuffling noise and loud voices coming from down the hall.” A middle-aged couple burst through the door, “very large, very heavily perfumed and clearly very rich. The woman came first, pushing ahead of her husband, moving aggressively toward our small meeting table. She had diamond studs in her ears and one in her nose. Her arms were covered in lavish bangles, many laced with precious stones. She was heavily made up and was wearing a blue and white sari covered with opulent gold and silver brocade and embroidery. She was very overweight and her flesh bulged through the open midsection of her taut sari. Her husband was bigger, wider, and flashier than she was. He wore a turban with a topaz set in the center just above his forehead, and a white brocade kurta. He had a ring on every finger of both hands. In the quiet of this hallway, they seemed to me like monsters as they barged into our tranquil and intimate scene.”
The couple demanded a picture with Mother Teresa, moved around like a doll to get the shot, and then left. The beauty of the moment felt ruined. “Mother Teresa returned to her chair by the table and continued as if nothing had happened, finishing her thoughts on the topic of out earlier conversation. But I could hardly hear her. I was so full of anger and outrage toward this couple…” After they hugged and kissed goodbye, Lynne went out to her car and settled in for the drive back, still angry at the rude couple. “I thought terrible thoughts about the intruders and felt a seething anger at the bossy, obnoxious, arrogant rich. My body was tense, and hatred ran through me. Along the way, fifteen or twenty minutes into the ride back to my hotel, I became somewhat calmer. I realized with some shame how I had reduced myself to hatred and prejudice in the presence of one of the most inspiring spiritual beings on the planet. I thought back and realized that Mother Teresa had had no problem with the wealthy couple. To her, they were children of God, no less and no more than the orphans in her care, and she had treated them with love and respect and then calmly returned to her meeting with me.”
That night, she wrote a letter to Mother Teresa, asking for her counsel. Weeks later she received a letter back. “The vicious cycle of poverty, she said, has been clearly articulated and is widely known. What is less obvious and goes almost completely unacknowledged is the vicious cycle of wealth. There is no recognition of the trap wealth so often is, and of the suffering of the wealthy: the loneliness, the isolation, the hardening of the heart, the hunger and the poverty of the soul that can come with the burden of wealth. She said that I had extended little or no compassion to the strong, the powerful, and the wealthy, while they need as much compassion as anyone else on earth.”
Both wealth and poverty carry burdens, and one set is always harder to see then the other.
* * *
Mark 12:38-44
Living Without Money
The widow in Mark’s story is giving away her last bits of money, but some people choose to live without money at all, in an alternate economy. Daniel Suelo has been living money-free for over a decade. “In 2000, he put his entire life savings in a phone booth, walked away, and has lived moneyless ever since. Most frequently, he lives in the caves and wilderness of Utah where he eats wild vegetation, scavenges roadkill, pulls food from dumpsters, and is sometimes fed by friends and strangers.” He does not take any food stamps or government handouts.” He says, “My first thought of living moneyless came when I was a child. In my Evangelical Christian upbringing, I wondered why, if we were followers of Jesus, we didn’t practice his teachings -- namely giving up possessions and doing not for the sake of reward (money and barter), but giving freely and receiving freely.” Like the widow, he gave away all of his money before he began this experiment, which became a lifestyle.
Suelo believes that generosity is at the core of our spirits. “Most important is that I’ve learned our true nature lives moneyless, giving freely and receiving freely. Even the most staid CEO is human underneath, and gives and receives freely with friends and family. By cultivating this nature in myself, I can see it in others, and it can be cultivated in others. When our real selves are cultivated, the gift economy is cultivated, our unreal selves (based on ulterior motivation) and all the nonsense drops away.” We, like the widow, can cultivate generosity within our own lives.
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: Unless God builds the house,
People: those who build it labor in vain.
Leader: Unless God guards the city,
People: the guard keeps watch in vain.
Leader: It is in vain that you eat the bread of anxious toil;
People: for God gives sleep to the beloved.
OR
Leader: Let us sing with joy to the God of all compassion.
People: We lift our hearts to the One who cares for all.
Leader: God is the God of all creation and all creatures.
People: We celebrate the love of God that reaches to everyone.
Leader: We are invited into God’s love so we can share it.
People: Joyfully we will share God’s love with all.
Hymns and Songs:
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
UMH: 89
H82: 376
PH: 464
AAHH: 120
NNBH: 40
NCH: 4
CH: 2
LBW: 551
ELA: 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
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
UMH: 140
AAHH: 158
NNBH: 45
NCH: 423
CH: 86
ELA: 733
W&P: 72
AMEC: 84
Renew: 249
The Lord’s My Shepherd, I’ll Not Want
UMH: 136
NNBH: 237/241
CH: 78
LBW: 451
ELA: 778
W&P: 86
AMEC: 208
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life
UMH: 427
H82: 609
PH: 408
NCH: 543
CH: 665
LBW: 429
ELA: 719
W&P: 591
AMEC: 561
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
UMH: 430
H82: 659/660
PH: 357
NNBH: 445
NCH: 503
CH: 602
LBW: 492
ELA: 818
W&P: 589
AMEC: 299
The Voice of God Is Calling
UMH: 436
Walk with Me
CCB: 88
Make Me a Servant
CCB: 90
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
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who cares for the widow and the orphan:
Grant us the grace to act compassionately
towards those who are in need;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the one who cares for the poor and needy. You look with compassion on the widow and the orphan. Help us to be true disciples of Jesus that we may act with compassion towards all your children who are in need. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to be compassionate with the needy.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have looked on the needy and desperate of this world and we have seen them as a threat. We have questioned whether they are truly in need. We have regarded them as the ‘other’ rather than seeing them as our sisters and brothers. Forgive us our selfishness and tune our hearts to you so that we may act with your love and caring. Amen.
Leader: God cares for all and welcomes us to draw near and be renewed with God’s love. Receive God’s grace and share God’s love with all.
Prayers of the People
We worship you, O God, the lover of all your children. You care for the needy and the lonely.
(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. We have looked on the needy and desperate of this world and we have seen them as a threat. We have questioned whether they are truly in need. We have regarded them as the ‘other’ rather than seeing them as our sisters and brothers. Forgive us our selfishness and tune our hearts to you so that we may act with your love and caring.
We thank you for your great love which is extended to all your people. We thank you for those who have been faithful in sharing your care with those in need. We thank you for Jesus who taught us how to share your love with our neighbors and our enemies.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our need and, especially, for those who find themselves shut off from the bounty of creation. We pray for those who live in places of violence and insecurity. We pray for those who feel they must flee their own homes because of violence and poverty.
(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
As we are approaching Thanksgiving this could be a good time to talk about some mission such as The Heifer Project and invite the children to participate. We who have much to be thankful for can share with those who have many needs.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
Giving God Everything!
by Chris Keating
Mark 12: 38-44
Gather ahead of time:
A roll or two of new pennies from a bank.
One of your church’s collection plates
An illustration of Mark 12:38-44 (available online)
While we may take an offering during Sunday school, or even talk about the importance of sharing, on the whole stewardship programs overlook children and youth. Jesus’ lesson about the widow’s offering provides an opportunity to help children understand the role generosity plays in our faith.
The story is not about raising money for a church’s budget. Instead, Jesus points to the simple faithfulness and fearless trust of a vulnerable woman who gives everything she has. Compared to the gifts presented by others in the crowd, the widow’s gift is just about worthless. But because she gave “everything she had, all she had to live on,” the woman demonstrated a courageous faith. She trusted that God would give her everything that she needed.
A vivid retelling of the story for the children will help them understand the contrasts between the gifts presented by the crowds and the gift offered by the widow. Compare the illustration of the story with the offering plate you have from your church. Ask them to identify the ways giving is the same or different today. Holding up the offering plate, talk about the many ways the gifts you receive make a difference for your church and community. How do we give “all that we have?”
The coins the woman gave were worth about a penny. Give each child one or two of the shiny new pennies. Holding a penny, ask them “What do you think you can buy with a penny?” Not much! And that was true for the people in Jesus’ time. Why would Jesus say that the woman’s gift was so valuable?
As they think about that, remind them that her gift was valuable because it was all the money she had. She knew that everything belonged to God, and that God would always take care of her. Because she trusted God, and because she gave all that she had, her gift was worth a lot.
Ask the children if they think their penny could make a difference in the world? It’s hard to say. But a fun math puzzle -- says the pastor who barely made it through algebra -- can help show just how valuable a penny can be!
Someone once asked a person if they would rather have a million dollars in one month or a penny doubled every day for 30 days. Most people would take the million dollars! But consider…
Day 1: $.01
Day 2: $.02
Day 3: $.04
Day 4: $.08
Day 5: $.16
Day 6: $.32
Day 7: $.64
Day 8: $1.28
Day 9: $2.56
Day 10: $5.12
Day 11: $10.24
Day 12: $20.48
Day 13: $40.96
Day 14: $81.92
Day 15: $163.84
Day 16: $327.68
Day 17: $655.36
Day 18: $1,310.72
Day 19: $2,621.44
Day 20: $5,242.88
Day 21: $10,485.76
Day 22: $20,971.52
Day 23: $41,943.04
Day 24: $83,886.08
Day 25: $167,772.16
Day 26: $335,544.32
Day 27: $671,088.64
Day 28: $1,342,177.28
Day 29: $2,684,354.56
Day 30: $5,368,709.12
The truth is that living generously is like that “magic” penny. Like the widow, we place our trust in God. We offer what we have, mixing our pennies together, and the results will be amazing. Challenge the children to think of ways they could give their penny, as well as other gifts, to God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, November 11, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 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.
- Living Beyond Fear by Tom Willadsen -- Fear is the word of the week. Especially as we approach the mid-term elections, our nation is steeped in all kinds of fear. The shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the shooting at a Kroger’s in Louisville, pipe bombs being mailed to those perceived as enemies. Ruth, the woman and the biblical book, are not just a pleasant respite from fear, but also offer a pathway away from fear.
- Flight To Hope by Dean Feldmeyer -- Normally we use this story as an opportunity to guilt and cajole our congregations into emulating the sacrificial giving of the widow. But maybe there’s another way of looking at this story.
- Sermon illustrations by Ron Love and Mary Austin
- Worship resources by George Reed that focus on compassion for the desperate.
- Giving God everything! Children’s sermons by Chris Keating -- Jesus reminds us that true generosity is demonstrated by the widow who placed her trust in God.
Living Beyond Fear
by Tom Willadsen
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
In the News
Saturday, October 27 is another day that Americans will remember. (Or not, perhaps we’re numb to mass shootings now.) This one, carried out at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, has been described as the deadliest attack on Jews in America in history. At this writing, (Wednesday, October 31) 11 people are dead, six others were injured, two of whom remain hospitalized.
In addition to being profoundly anti-Semitic, it appears the shooter was fearful of immigrants and targeted Tree of Life because of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), which resettled refugees in the United States.
“In a post on the social network Gab, (which is a haven for white nationalists and others on the alt-right. Gab was shut down for a week shortly after the shootings. The site went back up this past Saturday evening.) the accused shooter, Robert Bowers, 46, linked to a directory of synagogues participating in a HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) event, National Refugee Shabbat, saying he “appreciated” the list. As part of the elaborate anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to which he subscribed -- which prosecutors say motivated his crime -- Bowers claimed that HIAS was working to bring people to the United States to do violence.
HIAS is one of the voluntary agencies that works with the federal government, as do Church World Service and World Relief, to settle refugees in the United States.
“As our president likes to say, ‘We used to help refugees because they were Jewish but now we help refugees because we’re Jewish,’” (Bill) Swersey, a spokesman for HIAS, said.
HIAS is also involved in immigration causes around the world through its 10 international offices. The recent issues at the US-Mexico border and a migrant caravan have also become part of their work.
He said the humanitarian aid group doesn’t believe that Bowers called it out because of its Jewish roots but because it is assisting immigrants in finding refuge in the United States.
“I think what [Bowers] was responding to is the idea of the Jewish community supporting other people coming to live here,” Swersey said. “This is an elevation of the issue of anti-immigration, and it’s a concern to us and should be a concern to all Americans.”
Immigration has been a hot button topic as the mid-term elections approach. There is a “caravan” of people fleeing violence in Central American countries, headed to the United States. While there appears to be no outside organizing force to the caravan, it’s obvious that people are fleeing desperate situations and seeking asylum in the United States. The caravan has been estimated to contain 5,000 to 7,000 people. Mexico has not allowed caravan members to enter Mexico, neither to seek asylum in Mexico, nor to travel north through Mexico to seek asylum in the United States.
Fear of “the Other” is being fed by rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims. The caravan has been called “invaders.” Some have alleged, with no confirmation to date, that there are Middle Easterners and ISIS members in the caravan.
President Trump has sent 5,200 federal troops to support the work of the existing border security officers. The federal troops do not have the authority to apprehend people crossing into the United States. As commander-in-chief he is asserting the need of these troops to protect and defend the United States.
This is an excessive, and in many people’s opinion, politically-motivated effort to project strength to a public whose fears have been nurtured, not reduced, by elected officials.
President Trump stressed in his campaign that he would build a wall along the Mexican border, and make Mexico pay for it. While this was a powerful symbol it would not have the effect that the president desired. 60% of people who are in the United States without documentation entered legally. (Wisdom, “Walk in Their Shoes,” October 30, 2018) 100% of the September 11 terrorists entered the country legally.
One final fact, preventing people from entering the United States to seek asylum is a violation of both federal and international law. The notion that being tough on immigrants out of respect for the rule of law belies the fact that there are certain laws that the current administration has no interest in following.
In the Bible
In this climate of fear of The Other, the story of Ruth offers an alternative to fear. The preacher will need to give some background for today’s verses to be understood. Ruth, her sister-in-law Orpah, and their mother-in-law Naomi were all widowed. Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, from whence she came. Orpah decided to stay in Moab. Ruth was determined to stay with Naomi, even though that meant she had to leave her family, and culture of origin. Ruth got work gleaning in a barley field. The practice of gleaning is described in Leviticus 19:9 “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.” Other passages in the Torah that require the landowner not harvest to the edges of his field, nor pick every last grape from his orchard. This was a kind of welfare program for needy people.
Ruth happened to glean in Boaz’s field. She worked steadily and got Boaz’s attention. Boaz told his staff not to molest or bother Ruth, presumably such treatment was common toward woman who needed to glean to support their families. Boaz even told them to leave some stalks of grain on the ground for Ruth to get.
As the third chapter begins -- and the entire third chapter is part of this week’s reading -- Naomi advises her daughter-in-law about how to make herself known to Boaz. Boaz was going to have a fine time that night, winnowing the harvest, drinking and sleeping in piles of newly-threshed barley. Naomi tells Ruth to dress up and uncover Boaz’s feet in the dark after he’s sound asleep. (“Feet” is a frequent euphemism in the Hebrew scriptures for what the Monty Python crew called “naughty bits,” which is, itself, a euphemism.) Ruth does as she’s told, and Boaz recognizes that she is a “worthy woman,” and tells her to sit tight. While she has effectively offered herself in marriage to Boaz, there is another male who has a closer claim to Ruth than he does. Before dawn, he sends Ruth home with six “measures” of barley. It’s impossible to know how much barley this was. If one assumes the standard unit of weight, a seah, it would come to about 15 bushels. That would be an extraordinary amount of grain to carry in one’s cloak. Suffice it to say, Boaz sent Ruth home with as much grain as she could carry.
The part of chapter four omitted from today’s lectionary reading covers the public exchange between Boaz and Ruth’s husband’s nearer relative. After a little drama, the story ends happily and Boaz and Ruth married. Do not overlook the remaining verses. While it is Ruth who gives birth, it is Naomi who became the baby’s nurse (4:6) and the ladies of the neighborhood said, “A son has been born to Naomi.” One could say that the book could be called “Naomi.”
One final note, in what Christians call the Old Testament, the book of Ruth follows the book of Judges. This makes sense because Ruth begins “In the days when the judges ruled.” We consider it a historic book. Tradition has it that Ruth is read in its entirety on the second day of Shavuot, or Pentecost, the celebration of the firstfruits of the harvest. The sequence of the books that Jewish people use puts Ruth after Proverbs. Proverbs ends with a lengthy ode to “the capable wife” or “the worthy woman,” the very term that Boaz used to describe Ruth in 3:11! Ruth can be read as the embodiment of the ideal wife. (Next time you’re asked to lead a Bible study for the women’s group at your church, do Proverbs 31:10-31.)
In the Sermon
Ruth is the first convert to Judaism. She was a foreigner who was passionately determined to stay with (cleave unto) Naomi, her mother-in-law. Ruth left her home and put herself at risk. She was fortunate/blessed to find her way to Boaz’s harvest field, and Boaz noticed the foreign woman. She was a conspicuously dedicated worker.
Compare Ruth to the migrants in one of several caravans heading to the United States from Central America. These people left everything because of their fear of continuing to live in peril. (Check this week’s secondary article for a link between the migrants and the poor woman who tosses her two pennies into the offering.)
Boaz and the Bethlehemites (I checked, this is the correct term) could have feared and rejected Ruth, but they did not. She worked hard and she was attentive to Naomi, one of their own. Boaz embraced Ruth -- in at least two senses -- and so Boaz’s son, Obed, was not a “purebred” Bethlehmite. But wait, there’s more! Obed was Jesse’s father, Jesse was David’s father, and David was the best king. We call Bethlehem “the City of David.”
In the prologue to Matthew’s gospel, where the generations prior to Christ’s birth are laid out, Ruth is one of only four women mentioned. Each of the four is in some ways scandalous. Tamar was Judah’s daughter-in-law and the mother of his sons. Rahab was the prostitute who hid the spies Joshua had sent ahead of his invasion of the Promised Land. She recognized God’s power in the military conquests of the Israelites and asked to be spared when Joshua attacked Jericho. (You know the song.) Oh, and Rahab was Boaz’s mother. The fourth woman mentioned is “the wife of Uriah,” that is Bathsheba. David arranged to have Uriah killed in battle and committed adultery with Bathsheba. Bathsheba was Solomon’s mother.
One could argue that David’s lineage was not completely or “purely” royal. What would have happened if fearing Ruth, because she’s a foreigner, kept her from marrying Boaz? What if she had not had the courage to stand by her mother-in-law?
It is perfectly in keeping with Judaism to welcome and include people from other lands. The Ten Commandments explicitly includes “resident aliens” in the commandment to observe the Sabbath. In Deuteronomy’s version of the Ten Commandments, the people are reminded that they were once slaves whom God set free. Therefore the people should not be slaves to their work, but rather be able to trust the Lord to provide for them one day a week. The commandment to keep Sabbath is a commandment to trust the Lord, not to live in fear that one will not be provided for.
Ruth’s faith, her ability to risk leaving everything that was familiar to her, is like the faith of the poor woman at the temple. This kind of faith, one could call it “perilous faith,” is the antidote, the response to fear.
Is there a way we as a nation or as a society can live beyond fear? Can we find a way to trust one another? To reclaim the Christian practice of hospitality, or make our national identity one where were we truly are a nation of immigrants? It will require the courage to love. Are we capable of that?
SECOND THOUGHTS
Flight To Hope
by Dean Feldmeyer
Mark 12:38-44, Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
Every time I catch myself doing it I feel like a fool.
I’ve just finished a 48-minute workout on the elliptical machine at the gym.1 Now I have to stop at the supermarket and pick up a couple of things on my way home. I get to the parking lot and spend fifteen minutes driving around the lot, looking for a parking space that is close to the door so I don’t have to walk too far.
You get the irony, right? I’ve just spent 48 minutes of my life exercising at the gym but I refuse to park in a spot that will require me to walk an extra fifteen feet. Yeah, it’s nuts, I know.
So, it’s no wonder that I’m flummoxed when I hear about people who live in a country that is so horrible that they are willing to leave everything they have or know, their friends and their families, their homes and their histories, and walk 1,595 miles to a future with no guarantees or promises to a country that doesn’t want them.2
I mean, I can’t imagine walking 1,595 miles for anything. I can’t imagine anything that’s so bad that I would dump my entire life and take off on that hike. I always figured the Exodus story in the Bible was kind of a one and done sort of deal.
Who knew we’d be seeing that story being played out over and over again in our own time with our own president playing the part of Edom. (Numbers 20:14-20)
Anywhere But Here
But is the comparison a valid one? Are the members of the caravan as bad off as the ancient Hebrews in Egypt? Since the current caravan originated in Honduras, that’s the country I chose to look at. It isn’t pretty.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras, home to about 8.25 million people, has by far the highest homicide rate of all countries in the world. Its unparalleled average murder rate is 90.4 murders per 100,000 people. About one out of every 1,000 people is murdered every year.3
The gross national income, per capita, is $2,150, so 60.9% of the population lives in abject poverty. It is the second-poorest country in Central America, and “suffers from extraordinarily unequal distribution of income,” and rampant underemployment.
Widespread gang violence, orchestrated mainly by two gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, fuels the instability and suffering. Criminals have extorted Hondurans into paying an arbitrary “war tax” for their survival, and those who can’t pay often are killed.
“There are no jobs, no justice, no laws in Honduras,” said 32-year-old Karen Gallo, one of the migrants on the caravan.4
They are poor, desperate, tired, and hungry.
There is not one scintilla of evidence that they are the disease ridden, violent, criminal gang members that some have accused them of being. And it makes little sense that middle eastern terrorists would make their way to Honduras so they could walk 1,500-3,000 miles to get into the United States hidden in a caravan that has been under intense media scrutiny since it left Honduras.
The truth is that these people are desperate and afraid and there is nothing that can happen to them at the American border that is worse than what they will face when they get home.
News reporters identify them as, perhaps naively, optimistic that the United States is a place of compassion and kindness where they will be given a chance to live in relative safety and make lives for themselves and their families.
But if they can’t get into the United States, they will take anywhere else but the country from which they have come.
To put it in the words of poker players and gamblers, they have gone “all in” and they can’t go back.
The Widow Goes All In
In today’s gospel lesson from Mark, we have the familiar story of the “widow’s mite.”
Normally we use this story as an opportunity to guilt and cajole our congregations into emulating the sacrificial giving of the widow. Look, we say. She, out of faith, is giving all that she has. How many of you lot have faith like that?
No, I didn’t think so.
Ok, maybe we aren’t that brutal. Maybe we just let the implication lay there and make its own point. She gave all she had. Huh, imagine that. Boy, that takes a lot of faith.
But maybe there’s another way of looking at this story.
Let’s be honest. It’s just plain crazy to give all the money you have to the church. Your food money, your rent money, your clothing money, all of it? Really? No, that’s crazy.
Or, maybe it’s not so much crazy as it is desperate.
When I was a teenager my dad took my brother and me to a huge tent revival where a nationally renowned revivalist and faith healer was going to be preaching. Dad was not a believer in such nonsense (his word) but he wanted us to see it up close because he was absolutely sure that it was on its way out. The world was moving toward enlightenment so quickly, he said, that religious superstition would soon be a thing of the past.
So, we went and we watched and what we saw was, by and large, very poor, very desperate people putting money in ever present fried chicken buckets in the hope that these “signs of faith” would heal them of the diseases and disabilities that modern science had not been able to cure.
They were, in a word, desperate.
They were so desperate, in fact, that they were willing to invest the last dollars many of them had in the desperate hope that their “faith” would bring forth a miracle. They were investing their valuables, the resources with which they might have fed their families or paid for medicine, in a system that was tilted against them from the moment they walked through the flap in the tent.
Jesus has already told us in the introductory verses of this pericope that the temple system was a crooked, twisted system that made the wealthy wealthier and the poor poorer.
And I cannot help but wonder when he sees that woman put her last two cents into that system he isn’t sad. I have to wonder if he didn’t shake his head with sympathy and disgust for a system that rewards the rich for giving out of their abundance and snatches coins from the hand of a poor widow who goes all in, in the desperate hope that even though it hasn’t changed her life up to now, maybe this time it will.
Author Scott Hoezee, from the Center For Excellence in Preaching observes:
“Whatever the specifics, it appears that the religious leaders were doing something that was making the already-vulnerable widow population feel obligated to give to the temple more than they frankly could afford. That’s why when Jesus then sees a widow giving away the last two coins she had to rub together, he sees in that not first of all an example of good stewardship in action (and so something that we should all try to imitate). What Jesus saw was a glaring example of how far off the beam the whole temple enterprise had gotten. This woman felt obligated to give away what little she had and although that revealed how earnest she was, it was an earnestness that had been manipulated. So when Jesus says, “That’s all she had to live on,” he said it with exasperation in his voice. She should not have done that. She should not have been told to do that.”
We can choose to see those Honduran refugees in the caravan as enemies, as threats to our safety and security. Or, like Jesus sees the widow, we can see them as they really are, as poor, desperate people who are up against a system that is canted against them and determined to keep them desperate and poor.
We can see them throwing their last two cents in with the caravan, hoping that maybe, unlike all the others promises they’ve been given -- by the church, by the government, by other countries -- this one will actually pay off in some way that will help them and their families.
...............................
1 48 minutes is the approximate length of one episode of The Walking Dead.
2 1595 miles is the distance from Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, to Brownsville, Texas, the closest American city. Distance to San Diego, the farthest, is 2,879 miles.
3 https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=21167
4 https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/30/americas/migrant-caravan-countries-snapshots/index.html
...............................
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
Ruth 3:1-5; Psalm 146
Ministry / Testimony/ Leadership / Social Activism / Prophecy
Nelson Mandela’s memorial service was held at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on Tuesday, December 10, 2013. The main speaker at the service was South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma who served nine years in office. Though his administration was corrupt and riddled with scandal, the 2,274 words he spoke at Mandela’s funeral are worth recalling.
After the customary political introductions, Zuman opened his address with these words:
South Africans sing a popular freedom song about former President Nelson Mandela. We sing that he is one of a kind, that there is no one quite like him. Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela akekho ofana naye. The song is one of the most accurate descriptions of this global icon who is the founding President of a free and democratic South Africa and also the former President of the oldest liberation movement in the continent, the ANC. His passing has marked an unprecedented outpouring of grief across the world. Yet, it is grief, tinged with admiration and celebration. Everyone has had a Mandela moment, when this world icon has touched their lives.
The hymn akekho ofana naye, which is sung in Zulu, was obviously familiar to the South Africans, but the words remain mysterious to us. The lyrics of akekho ofana naye are sung as follows:
Akekho Ofana Nojesu (There’s no one like Jesus)
Akekho ofana naye (There’s no one like Him)
Akekho Ofana Nojesu (There’s no one like Jesus)
Akekho ofana naye (There’s no one like Him)
Siyahamba siyahamba akekho akekho (I have traveled everywhere, no one)
Siyajika siyajika akekho akekho (I have looked everywhere, no one)
Siyafuna siyafuna akekho akekho (I have searched everywhere, no one)
Akekho afana naye (There is no one like Him)
Shortly after complimenting Mandela with the song akekho ofana naye, in the tradition of South Africa, in the rest of his speech he referred to Mandela by his tribal name Madiba. Zuma spoke Madiba of the great and fearless activist for freedom and human rights:
Courageous leaders are able to abandon their narrow concerns for bigger and all-embracing dreams, even if those dreams come at a huge price. Madiba embodied this trait. He was a fearless freedom fighter who refused to allow the brutality of the apartheid state to stand in the way of the struggle for the liberation of his people. Being a lawyer, he understood the possible consequences of his actions. But he also knew that no unjust system could last forever. He said at an ANC Youth League conference in 1951; “True, the struggle will be a bitter one. Leaders will be deported, imprisoned, and even shot. “The government will terrorize the people and their leaders in an effort to halt the forward march; ordinary forms of organization will be rendered impossible. But the spirit of the people cannot be crushed…until full victory is won.” The struggle became Madiba’s life.
* * *
Ruth 3:1-5
Delilah Rene Luke is the host of the radio song and talk show that is simply known as Delilah. The show is nationally syndicated. The format is a caller shares her or his personal problems on the air. Then Delilah takes three minutes to offer some common-sense advice and comforting words. She then selects a song that either reflects the caller’s mood or brings some sort of emotional comfort. The program which begins at 7pm continues through midnight. Delilah has 8 million listeners.
In October 2018, Delilah published her book titled One Heart at a Time. In the books’ introduction Delilah offers this reason for writing her book:
Our world is trouped on so many fronts, and it’s hard to be up against forces so enormous and powerful when you are one person, one heart, trying to effect change. Sometimes I feel like a tiny mouse facing down a rhinoceros. So how do we change the world? The answer: one heart at a time. I’ll start by sharing my heart with you.
She went on to write:
When your life comes into harmony with the Lord’s plan for you, and people around you start to notice the change, guess what? They’ll want to know what you know. So you’ll share your stories, too, soften hearts, open eyes, and change the world with me, one heart at a time.
* * *
Mark 12:42-44
Stewardship / Blessings / Appreciation
Sandra O’Connor we the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. She was nominated by President Ronald Reagan and took office in 1981 and served until her retirement in 2006. One of the reasons she chose to retire is to care for her husband, John, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. He died in 2009. In an open letter, published in October 2018, Sandra O’Connor announced that she had Alzheimer’s. She wrote that many people were asking about her current status and activities, since she has not lectured publicly for the past two years. She decided it was important to “be open about these changes.” In her open letter to the public she wrote:
While in the final chapter of my life with dementia may be trying, nothing has diminished my gratitude and deep appreciation for the countless blessings in my life…As a young cowgirl growing up in the Arizona desert, I could never have imagined that one day I would become the first woman justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
* * *
Mark 12:41-44
Stewardship
In October 2018 the Mega Millions lottery reached a payout of $1.6 billion. That meant there were 25 rollovers without a single winning ticket being drawn. For $2 your ticket has to match the six numbers of the ticket drawn by the lottery association. There are 302 million possible winning combinations. Your chance of winning can be compared to being a single individual in the entire United States population who was randomly selected. The odds of winning are about the same as rolling a die and getting a one, eleven times in a row. The reason people play, according to Jane Risen, a professor at the University of Chicago, is if you don’t play there’s the “sense of regret to not have been the only one not playing.” Well, there is one individual who has no sense of regret. The winning ticket was sold at a KC Mart Simpsonville, about 90 miles northwest of Columbia, South Carolina.
* * *
Mark 12:41-44
Stewardship
In October 2018 the Mega Millions lottery reached a payout of $1.6 billion. That meant there were 25 rollovers without a single winning ticket being drawn. For $2 your ticket has to match the six numbers of the ticket drawn by the lottery association. There are 302 million possible winning combinations. Your chance of winning can be compared to being a single individual in the entire United States population who was randomly selected. The odds of winning are about the same as rolling a die and getting a one, eleven times in a row. Lottery official have continually changed the rule for winning, creating more and more jackpots that approach a billion dollars. This may sound good as the jackpots get bigger more people buy tickets. In one billion dollar jackpot, 208 million tickets were sold. In California, at lunch hours, the height of ticket sales, 200 tickets were being sold every second for a billion-dollar prize. This may sound great for lottery officials, except, less tickets are being sold for the regular daily jackpots. A $400 million jackpot hardly seems worth bothering with as one waits for the billion-dollar prize to be challenged.
* * *
Ruth 4:15; Psalm 127:1; Hebrews 9:26
Obedience / Vain (selfish) living / Judgement (on lifestyle)
The “100 deadliest days.” Memorial Day to Labor Day. School is out and teenagers are driving more. Vacationers are taking long road trips. And more people will die from traffic deaths during this period than any other time during the year. There are many reasons for this, but the overriding cause is driver distraction. Driver distractions, such as texting and using a cellphone, contribute to 58.5% of the fatal accidents. In a cautionary statement, Jennifer Ryan, the AAA director of state realties, said in June 2016, “It’s no secret that teens are extremely connected to their cellphones.”
* * *
Mark 12:38-40
False Prophets / Hypocrites
On stage during Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, which was held at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg in December 2013, there was an interpreter signing for the deaf. For hours he interpreted the speakers, but the problem was that he did not know sign language. He just used childish motions as heads of state gave passionate speeches. Yet, no one stopped him. No one escorted him off the stage. Those who were deaf knew he was a fake, but were unable to get him removed from the stage. David Buxton, the CEO of the British Deaf Association said, “it was hours of complete nonsense.”
* * *
Ruth 4:13-17
Ministry / Compassion / Acceptance
Hawaii still has a Leprosy Colony of six patients. Hawaii suffered terrible diseases from merchant ships that travelled to the island from Asia in the early 1800s. Venereal disease, smallpox and typhoid killed tens of thousands. But as decades passed, new diseases were always arriving. One was leprosy. The state mandated that those who had leprosy were to be quarantined, falsely believing the ailment was highly contagious. In 1865 King Kamehameha V issued the decree titled “Act of Prevent the Spread of Leprosy.” A Leprosy Colony was established on the small island of Molokai. Over the decades more than 8,000 leprosy patients were banished to the 8,725-acre area. It was not until 1969 that the decree was abolished. In 2009, there were 16 total individuals who had leprosy, with six choosing to remain in the colony rather than join the outside world. There ages are from 73 to 92. President Obama, in 2009, signed legislation that a memorial be built to honor the 8,000 patients, listing all of their names.
* * *
Hebrews 9:27; Mark 12:38-4
Judgement
After the close of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011, People magazine did a review of its 25 years of broadcasting. The article highlighted those shows which were most memorial. One of the shows listed, with photograph, is Tom Cruise jumping up-and-down on a yellow chair declaring his love for Katie Holmes. People magazine labeled this incident as “possibly the greatest watercooler incident of all time.” In other words, Cruise’s actions were so absurd that everyone would talk about them for days and weeks to come. In fact, it could become one of the most remembered acts in the 25 years of filming The Oprah Winfrey Show.
* * *
Veterans’ Day
It was 71 years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and President Obama became the first siting president to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in May 2016. A visit to this historic but tragic site was on Obama’s agenda since he first took office. Mr. Obama’s visit to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park had all the pomp, ceremony and planned choreography of a state visit or a leader’s funeral. With thousands in attendance and much of Japan watching on TV, President Obama walked forward alone at the park and laid a wreath on a white pyramid. He paused before the memorial, his head bowed. Before travelling to Japan, Obama visited Vietnam as a sign of healing past wounds. In a speech that was delivered in a slow and deliberate cadence, Obama said, “Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-far past.” He went on to say of those who perished, “Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.”
From team member Mary Austin:
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
Grandmother Power
The architect of Ruth’s relationship with Boaz is her mother-in-law Naomi, and when they have a child, the women of the neighborhood proclaim the child as Naomi’s. In fact, he is, and without her vision and plans, this ancestor of David would not have come to be.
Grandmothers in our world are putting similar kinds of energy into a better world. Paola Gianturco writes, “Today’s grandmothers are different from mine. My grandmother lived a mile away. I played under her bushes where spring violets grew. She baked a dollop of meringue on a saltine cracker as a treat for me -- and prepared delicious Sunday dinners: chicken that my grandfather caught and vegetables that she grew in her garden. Her bathtub had feet and her phone had a party line. She folded Christmas wrappings to use again. She kept her money in a safe inside a kitchen cabinet.”
But now things are different. “Today, the majority of grandmothers in the United States are between the ages of 45 and 64, younger than they’ve ever been historically and too young to retire…They are also healthier, better educated -- and, because many work, better off than grandmothers have ever been…All that adds up to a lot of grandmother power!”
“Grandmothers are forming activist groups all over the world to tackle intractable issues: poverty, illiteracy, environmental degradation, disease, injustice and violence…In India, illiterate grandmothers who had learned solar engineering at the Barefoot College in Rajasthan brought light to 10,000 village households -- and everything changed. Midwives could see to deliver babies at night. Children no longer got black lung disease from studying by kerosene lamps. The Indian grandmothers returned to the school and taught grandmothers from 23 developing countries who returned home and installed solar electricity in 35,000 households all over the global south.”
Across the world, in Canada, “Eight thousand Canadian grandmothers stand in solidarity with African grandmothers who are raising children orphaned by AIDS. They have formed a partnership, the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, coordinated by the Stephen Lewis Foundation, which is based in Toronto. The Canadian grandmothers will do almost anything to earn money for their African counterparts: sell ice cream at the beach, cater weddings, create and sell crafts, and so much more. In the past six years, 240 Canadian grandmother groups have raised $16.5 million, enough to send continuous small cash infusions to grandmothers raising children orphaned by AIDS in 15 African countries.”
As Naomi knows, grandmother power is strong power!
* * *
Mark 12:38-44
Poverty and Wealth
As Jesus watches the poor widow put her last coins into the temple treasury, both extreme poverty and extreme wealth are visible in the scene. Lynne Twist has spent her career helping people align their money with their values, and she tells about an important lesson she learned about wealth and poverty from Mother Theresa.
Lynne Twist writes, “I was raised as a Catholic, and all through my life I was deeply inspired by Mother Teresa…In the 1970s when, as a young mother and wife, I began to fully embrace my personal commitment to end world hunger, I thought a lot about her and her work among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta and in places of hunger and poverty all over the world. On my first trip to India, as I felt overwhelmed by the horrific poverty that I saw, I thought about her and how she had placed herself in the middle of human suffering for her entire life, remaining a member of the community of the poorest of the poor even as she was celebrated by the most rich and powerful leaders of the world.” She decided to try to meet Mother Theresa, and a friend helped make the introduction.
When she met Mother Theresa, “she modestly described herself as ‘God’s Pencil,’ and told me that she could see in my eyes and by my work that I, too, was ‘God’s Pencil.’ This acknowledgement moved me deeply. In her presence, I felt an unconditional love and connectedness to the whole world so profound that I could not hold back my tears and so I spoke to her through them. We were deeply engaged in this intimate conversation when we were interrupted by a scuffling noise and loud voices coming from down the hall.” A middle-aged couple burst through the door, “very large, very heavily perfumed and clearly very rich. The woman came first, pushing ahead of her husband, moving aggressively toward our small meeting table. She had diamond studs in her ears and one in her nose. Her arms were covered in lavish bangles, many laced with precious stones. She was heavily made up and was wearing a blue and white sari covered with opulent gold and silver brocade and embroidery. She was very overweight and her flesh bulged through the open midsection of her taut sari. Her husband was bigger, wider, and flashier than she was. He wore a turban with a topaz set in the center just above his forehead, and a white brocade kurta. He had a ring on every finger of both hands. In the quiet of this hallway, they seemed to me like monsters as they barged into our tranquil and intimate scene.”
The couple demanded a picture with Mother Teresa, moved around like a doll to get the shot, and then left. The beauty of the moment felt ruined. “Mother Teresa returned to her chair by the table and continued as if nothing had happened, finishing her thoughts on the topic of out earlier conversation. But I could hardly hear her. I was so full of anger and outrage toward this couple…” After they hugged and kissed goodbye, Lynne went out to her car and settled in for the drive back, still angry at the rude couple. “I thought terrible thoughts about the intruders and felt a seething anger at the bossy, obnoxious, arrogant rich. My body was tense, and hatred ran through me. Along the way, fifteen or twenty minutes into the ride back to my hotel, I became somewhat calmer. I realized with some shame how I had reduced myself to hatred and prejudice in the presence of one of the most inspiring spiritual beings on the planet. I thought back and realized that Mother Teresa had had no problem with the wealthy couple. To her, they were children of God, no less and no more than the orphans in her care, and she had treated them with love and respect and then calmly returned to her meeting with me.”
That night, she wrote a letter to Mother Teresa, asking for her counsel. Weeks later she received a letter back. “The vicious cycle of poverty, she said, has been clearly articulated and is widely known. What is less obvious and goes almost completely unacknowledged is the vicious cycle of wealth. There is no recognition of the trap wealth so often is, and of the suffering of the wealthy: the loneliness, the isolation, the hardening of the heart, the hunger and the poverty of the soul that can come with the burden of wealth. She said that I had extended little or no compassion to the strong, the powerful, and the wealthy, while they need as much compassion as anyone else on earth.”
Both wealth and poverty carry burdens, and one set is always harder to see then the other.
* * *
Mark 12:38-44
Living Without Money
The widow in Mark’s story is giving away her last bits of money, but some people choose to live without money at all, in an alternate economy. Daniel Suelo has been living money-free for over a decade. “In 2000, he put his entire life savings in a phone booth, walked away, and has lived moneyless ever since. Most frequently, he lives in the caves and wilderness of Utah where he eats wild vegetation, scavenges roadkill, pulls food from dumpsters, and is sometimes fed by friends and strangers.” He does not take any food stamps or government handouts.” He says, “My first thought of living moneyless came when I was a child. In my Evangelical Christian upbringing, I wondered why, if we were followers of Jesus, we didn’t practice his teachings -- namely giving up possessions and doing not for the sake of reward (money and barter), but giving freely and receiving freely.” Like the widow, he gave away all of his money before he began this experiment, which became a lifestyle.
Suelo believes that generosity is at the core of our spirits. “Most important is that I’ve learned our true nature lives moneyless, giving freely and receiving freely. Even the most staid CEO is human underneath, and gives and receives freely with friends and family. By cultivating this nature in myself, I can see it in others, and it can be cultivated in others. When our real selves are cultivated, the gift economy is cultivated, our unreal selves (based on ulterior motivation) and all the nonsense drops away.” We, like the widow, can cultivate generosity within our own lives.
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship:
Leader: Unless God builds the house,
People: those who build it labor in vain.
Leader: Unless God guards the city,
People: the guard keeps watch in vain.
Leader: It is in vain that you eat the bread of anxious toil;
People: for God gives sleep to the beloved.
OR
Leader: Let us sing with joy to the God of all compassion.
People: We lift our hearts to the One who cares for all.
Leader: God is the God of all creation and all creatures.
People: We celebrate the love of God that reaches to everyone.
Leader: We are invited into God’s love so we can share it.
People: Joyfully we will share God’s love with all.
Hymns and Songs:
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
UMH: 89
H82: 376
PH: 464
AAHH: 120
NNBH: 40
NCH: 4
CH: 2
LBW: 551
ELA: 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
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
UMH: 140
AAHH: 158
NNBH: 45
NCH: 423
CH: 86
ELA: 733
W&P: 72
AMEC: 84
Renew: 249
The Lord’s My Shepherd, I’ll Not Want
UMH: 136
NNBH: 237/241
CH: 78
LBW: 451
ELA: 778
W&P: 86
AMEC: 208
Hope of the World
UMH: 178
H82: 472
PH: 360
NCH: 46
CH: 538
LBW: 493
W&P: 404
Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life
UMH: 427
H82: 609
PH: 408
NCH: 543
CH: 665
LBW: 429
ELA: 719
W&P: 591
AMEC: 561
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
UMH: 430
H82: 659/660
PH: 357
NNBH: 445
NCH: 503
CH: 602
LBW: 492
ELA: 818
W&P: 589
AMEC: 299
The Voice of God Is Calling
UMH: 436
Walk with Me
CCB: 88
Make Me a Servant
CCB: 90
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
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who cares for the widow and the orphan:
Grant us the grace to act compassionately
towards those who are in need;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the one who cares for the poor and needy. You look with compassion on the widow and the orphan. Help us to be true disciples of Jesus that we may act with compassion towards all your children who are in need. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to be compassionate with the needy.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have looked on the needy and desperate of this world and we have seen them as a threat. We have questioned whether they are truly in need. We have regarded them as the ‘other’ rather than seeing them as our sisters and brothers. Forgive us our selfishness and tune our hearts to you so that we may act with your love and caring. Amen.
Leader: God cares for all and welcomes us to draw near and be renewed with God’s love. Receive God’s grace and share God’s love with all.
Prayers of the People
We worship you, O God, the lover of all your children. You care for the needy and the lonely.
(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. We have looked on the needy and desperate of this world and we have seen them as a threat. We have questioned whether they are truly in need. We have regarded them as the ‘other’ rather than seeing them as our sisters and brothers. Forgive us our selfishness and tune our hearts to you so that we may act with your love and caring.
We thank you for your great love which is extended to all your people. We thank you for those who have been faithful in sharing your care with those in need. We thank you for Jesus who taught us how to share your love with our neighbors and our enemies.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for one another in our need and, especially, for those who find themselves shut off from the bounty of creation. We pray for those who live in places of violence and insecurity. We pray for those who feel they must flee their own homes because of violence and poverty.
(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
As we are approaching Thanksgiving this could be a good time to talk about some mission such as The Heifer Project and invite the children to participate. We who have much to be thankful for can share with those who have many needs.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
Giving God Everything!
by Chris Keating
Mark 12: 38-44
Gather ahead of time:
A roll or two of new pennies from a bank.
One of your church’s collection plates
An illustration of Mark 12:38-44 (available online)
While we may take an offering during Sunday school, or even talk about the importance of sharing, on the whole stewardship programs overlook children and youth. Jesus’ lesson about the widow’s offering provides an opportunity to help children understand the role generosity plays in our faith.
The story is not about raising money for a church’s budget. Instead, Jesus points to the simple faithfulness and fearless trust of a vulnerable woman who gives everything she has. Compared to the gifts presented by others in the crowd, the widow’s gift is just about worthless. But because she gave “everything she had, all she had to live on,” the woman demonstrated a courageous faith. She trusted that God would give her everything that she needed.
A vivid retelling of the story for the children will help them understand the contrasts between the gifts presented by the crowds and the gift offered by the widow. Compare the illustration of the story with the offering plate you have from your church. Ask them to identify the ways giving is the same or different today. Holding up the offering plate, talk about the many ways the gifts you receive make a difference for your church and community. How do we give “all that we have?”
The coins the woman gave were worth about a penny. Give each child one or two of the shiny new pennies. Holding a penny, ask them “What do you think you can buy with a penny?” Not much! And that was true for the people in Jesus’ time. Why would Jesus say that the woman’s gift was so valuable?
As they think about that, remind them that her gift was valuable because it was all the money she had. She knew that everything belonged to God, and that God would always take care of her. Because she trusted God, and because she gave all that she had, her gift was worth a lot.
Ask the children if they think their penny could make a difference in the world? It’s hard to say. But a fun math puzzle -- says the pastor who barely made it through algebra -- can help show just how valuable a penny can be!
Someone once asked a person if they would rather have a million dollars in one month or a penny doubled every day for 30 days. Most people would take the million dollars! But consider…
Day 1: $.01
Day 2: $.02
Day 3: $.04
Day 4: $.08
Day 5: $.16
Day 6: $.32
Day 7: $.64
Day 8: $1.28
Day 9: $2.56
Day 10: $5.12
Day 11: $10.24
Day 12: $20.48
Day 13: $40.96
Day 14: $81.92
Day 15: $163.84
Day 16: $327.68
Day 17: $655.36
Day 18: $1,310.72
Day 19: $2,621.44
Day 20: $5,242.88
Day 21: $10,485.76
Day 22: $20,971.52
Day 23: $41,943.04
Day 24: $83,886.08
Day 25: $167,772.16
Day 26: $335,544.32
Day 27: $671,088.64
Day 28: $1,342,177.28
Day 29: $2,684,354.56
Day 30: $5,368,709.12
The truth is that living generously is like that “magic” penny. Like the widow, we place our trust in God. We offer what we have, mixing our pennies together, and the results will be amazing. Challenge the children to think of ways they could give their penny, as well as other gifts, to God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, November 11, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 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.
