Online Worship – February 28, 2020 Second Sunday of Lent

Prelude There Will Be Peace in the Valley for Me (by Thomas Dorsey)

Call to Worship: On this second Sunday of Lent, we come seeking God. In this time of uncertainty in our lives, we come seeking God. Quieting our minds, opening our hearts, and waiting for the divine mystery to make itself known, we come to worship God.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Kids Changing the World teach us about Black Awareness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzt3gFgYVYk

Hymn : VU 670 Precious Lord, Take My Hand – by Thomas Dorsey

Precious Lord, take my hand Lead me on, let me stand I am tired, I'm weak, I am worn Through the storm, through the night Lead me on to the light Take my hand, precious Lord Lead me home.

When my way grows drear Precious Lord, linger near When my life is almost gone Hear my cry, hear my call Hold my hand lest I fall Take my hand, precious Lord Lead me home.

When the darkness appears, And the night draws near, And the day is past and gone, At the river I stand, guide my feet,hold by hand, take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.

Opening Prayer: We come to you, O God. For you do not turn away. We come to you, Holy Presence, for you have heard our cry. We come to you, Infinite Wisdom, for you live in us. May this time be sacred, shaped beyond this world, and ready for encounter. We come to you, Great Mystery, for you come to us. Amen.

Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 6:1-9 (The Great Commandment)

Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Message He wasn’t always like this. As a Black man who grew up nearby in Cambridge, Waterloo Region, he said that he accepted the fact that he was an outsider, and was “comfortable with micro-aggressions”, keeping silent on the subtle incidents of racism, feeling protected by what he calls the “bulletproof armour” that he had built around him. But now, it’s different. Now he wants to share his experiences and to do more to encourage youth and to mentor them.

This man’s name is Prempeh Williams, a Black man. For 16 years he has worked in a white-dominated investment banking sector and is currently a director at TD Securities in Toronto. But this past year’s racial reckoning after George Floyd’s death and the local rallies for Black Lives Matter was for Williams a big wake-up call. It’s not that a Black man growing up in Cambridge never experienced racism or got called the N-word at school. He did, but like other Black people he knows, he just put up with it and moved on. The thing was, after Floyd’s horrifying death graphically depicted on a video that went viral, his white colleagues at work asked him if he was OK. They told him that they didn’t realize that is was that bad. “I was confused at first”, Williams reflected. He said, “I thought we all knew how bad it was. How could someone who knows me, not know?” So he started to tell his story on his blog posts. At age 48, Williams recalled a time when he told his Grade 8 guidance counsellor that he wanted to take advanced courses at Galt Collegiate High School, because at that time he dreamed of becoming a lawyer. However, the counsellor suggested that he just take general-level courses and become a law clerk. He said “I went home and told my parents. My mom went right into the school and told the counsellor off!” Today he appreciates his parents telling him he could be anything he wanted to be, and that they reinforced many positive messages for him. Today, as the father of two girls, Prempeh Williams got together with other Black professionals and created what they call the Black Opportunity Fund, aiming to become a national organization to combat anti-Black racism in Canada. The group has the ambitious goal of raising $1.5 billion over the next 10 years through government grants, corporate and private donations, all to support non-profits and charitable organizations in Black communities. So I’m telling you this story this morning because it’s the last day of Black History month, yet the continuation of something very important for us as Christians. Near the beginning of February, we shared some “vignettes” of Black people who lived in different parts of Canada, all of them from the past. This morning, I’m focusing on people in the present day, and how the experience of living in the midst of this pandemic gave many of us the ability to focus our attention on what was really going on in the world in terms of racial justice. Now we know that most all of us are white in our church – that’s just the way things evolved in this part of southern Ontario, Canada. Yet, we have a unique opportunity for solidarity with our Black brothers and sisters, not only of the Christian faith, but of all faiths.

Moses said to the children of Israel, “The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.”

What impresses me is that this passage from the Book of Deuteronomy which we heard today has to do with the centrality of God in one’s life. We know that later in the New Testament, Jesus adds the words, “And love your neighbour as yourself.” So not only are we to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and with all our might, but also to love our neighbour – those of ALL races and cultures.

So as we continue our prayers during this time of celebrating Black history and looking towards a future that truly embraces equality and justice, I would just like to end by sharing with you a few stories of some outstanding Black people:

If you are on our Zoom screen, raise your hands if you know or have heard of Bass Reeves. How many of you are familiar with the legendary figure the Lone Ranger?

Maybe you saw the TV series or you read about him in books. In the TV series, the Lone Ranger was portrayed by Clayton Moore, a white male. Tonto, was played by Jay Silverheels, a Canadian of the Mohawk Aboriginal people. In the TV series, the Lone Ranger wore a black mask so that his enemies could not recognize him. In reality this character was modeled after the “real” lone ranger, actually a black lawman named Bass Reeves. Many aspects of his life were written out of the story, including his ethnicity. The basics however remained the same: a lawman hunting down bad guys, accompanied by a Native American, riding on a white horse, and with a silver trademark. Historians of the American West have also, until recently, ignored the fact that this man, the real Lone Ranger, was African American: a free Black man who headed West to find himself less subject to the racist structure of the established Eastern and Southern United States. He was credited with arresting more than 3000 felons.

Another quiz question:

What about Lewis Latimer, how many of you are familiar with him? How many of you have heard of Thomas Edison? Are you seeing a pattern here? The facts are that in 1874, Lewis Latimer, co-patented (with Charles W. Brown) an improved toilet system for railroad cars called the “Water Closet for Railroad Cars” (U.S. Patent 147,363). In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell employed Latimer, then a draftsman at Bell's patent law firm, to draft the necessary drawings required to receive a patent for Bell's telephone. Latimer received a patent in January 1881 for the "Process of Manufacturing Carbons", an improved method for the production of carbon filaments used in lightbulbs.

The Edison Electric Light Company in New York City hired Latimer in 1884, as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights. Latimer is credited with an improved process for creating a carbon filament at this time, which was an improvement on Thomas Edison's original paper filament, which would burn out quickly. While Edison is of course credited for inventing the lightbulb, it was actually Latimer’s invention that got it to work the way Edison envisioned, and yet you seldom hear his name. At the time of his death in 1928 Latimer held seven U.S. patents.

Now raise your hands if you know what these individuals have in common with the American Civil Rights movement: William Moore, Rev. Bruce Klunder, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Rev. James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, Jonathan Daniels, and Juliette Morgan. Each of these individuals participated in and died during the Civil Rights movement. And they all had something in common! What was that? Well, what makes them stand out is that each of these individuals were white and gave their lives fighting for racial equality. I bring this to your attention because some would have you believe that Black history month is totally about the history of blacks and what they contributed to humanity, but it’s about so much more. Our history includes the Civil Rights movement which included white Americans and white Canadians who believed in equal rights for all races. We must remember that there were many whites who supported and believed that all people were created equal and were willing to take a stand for that belief. I want to make this crystal clear: that there were some white people who walked the front lines and died because they supported equal rights. They did this in place of some blacks who felt that fighting for equal rights was not worth their risking own lives and the welfare of their families. I want you to know that there were some whites who stood up for Blacks when, for whatever reason, they could not stand up for themselves. They too deserve to be remembered during this time of black history month.

So I want to go forward knowing that even as people of the dominant culture – or perhaps especially as people of the dominant culture – we can change our world. We can stand up to racism in its many forms, and truly listen to people of colour when they tell their stories and share their history. We can make changes in how things are done in many aspects of living together.

We are one humanity, not separate entities. Truly loving the Lord our God with our whole heart, our whole soul and our whole might involves loving all of our neighbours as ourselves. May it be so. Amen.

Music Video: We Are Not Alone – by Pepper Choplin, sung by the Riverside Choir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO28FY_MPdA

Prayers of the People and the Lord’s Prayer: Loving parent, Holy Mystery, we come in prayer with faith knowing that our every word is heard. We come in prayer with faith knowing that you always work for our highest good. We come in prayer with faith in the assurance that you are with us always. We hope against hope that through our heart longings, things that we dream of that do not yet exist in our world will be called into existence. We come in prayer knowing that our deepest desires and dreams are plentiful in your world. We dream of a just peace in places stricken by oppression and violence. We dream of loving-kindness among people afflicted by prejudice and hate... We dream of abundant life in communities suffering from generational trauma... We dream of healing mercies in people living with devastating illness... We dream of safety for those experiencing abuse... We dream of full plates for the hungry and homes for the homeless... We dream that your way of love will reign here on earth... And we pray for ourselves as we stop for a moment to look inward and share with you all the concerns, and joys we find there. Hear the prayers of our hearts... (silence).... Today we remember ______Great Mystery, we are living in troubled times. Strengthen us, and fortify us with patience, and kindness and the will to be what you need each of us to be to our neighbours, for we are all your children and we are all connected - what we do to anyone we do to you and to ourselves for we are one in you. We offer these and all of our prayers in the name of our brother, Jesus the Christ, who walks with us, who calls us and who loves us. And we repeat the words he taught us to say as we pray together saying, “Our Father who art in heaven….”

Offertory Reminder

Prayer: Our gifts seem so little and the world is so big and so overwhelming right now, yet we offer our gifts to you, Precious God. Take what we offer and bless it for your mission of love. In a world of conflict and pandemic, may these gifts, and we ourselves, become agents of change and transformation. Amen.

Hymn VU 614 In Suffering Love (verses 1, 2, & 3) https://slideplayer.com/slide/13180999/

Blessing: As we journey, God says to you and me: I am with you, I hold you, I call you, I know you, I care for you, I travel with you, I give myself to you, I am on this journey with you, I am God, and my steadfast love is with you always. Let us travel in peace.

Sung Benediction: “Go Now in Peace” Go now in peace. Never be afraid. God will go with you each hour of every day. Go now in faith, steadfast, strong and true. Know God will guide you in all you do. Go now in love and show you believe. Reach out to others so all the world can see. God will be there within, around, above. Go now in peace, in faith, and in love. Amen, amen, amen.