First Baptist Church in Needham 858 Great Plain Avenue, Needham MA 02492 www.fbcneedham.org Meditations for Sunday, July 5, 2020 (or whenever you are so led to pause, reflect, and pray) 5th Sunday after Pentecost Edition 16 Lighting the Candle of Life You may wish to light a candle or use the moonglow photo as a focus. ALL: We light the Candle of Life — a candle that represents community, spirit, and the fullness of all of life — birth and death and all the transitions in between and beyond. Preparing to Enter Worship “God is above all else, a being of immense beauty. It is this beauty that continues to draw us and enfold us in eternal goodness. This mysterious Beloved is forever wooing us, longing for us to be totally immersed in love of the purest kind. As I look at my life, I count as my greatest blessing the gift of God’s own essence. Being able to know this wondrous God of beauty, being embraced and welcomed home time and again, all of this is truly powerful. Today: I am enfolded in eternal goodness.”1 Invitation: Moving to the next generation in Abraham and Sarah’s family saga, we enter July listening to God’s lovesong to each one of us through the love stories of Isaac and Rebekah and Song of Solomon. Enter this service and consider how and in what manner you find God draws you into God’s own eternal goodness, even in the midst of a most tumultuous, chaotic, and painfully uncertain year. 1Joyce Rupp, Anchors for the Soul: Daily Wisdom for Inspiration and Guidance (Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2018), July 5. 1 Hymn 729 Life Every Voice and Sing LIFT EVERY VOICE The poet, novelist, lawyer, and civil rights leader James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was born in Jacksonville, FL. His work in literature, theatre, education, as a U.S. diplomat, and as the head of the NAACP in the 1920s served to promote the vast array of African-American talent and the Black experience in the U.S. alongside diligent civil rights efforts. One of Johnson’s primary initiatives was to get a federal anti-lynching bill passed, which was unsuccessful. Over the next 100 years, the Senate and House of Representative failed to pass such a law despite over 200 attempted bills. His personal creed was, “I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend and maintain its integrity against all the powers of hell.”2 With this strength of character and spirit in the face of systemic racism, Johnson wrote these words as “a tribute to Black endurance, hope, and religious faith.”3 Today, enter into the fullness of the complex story of our shared life together as a people, a society, and as children unto God as you sing, read aloud, or sing along online: https://youtu.be/58jnoByqPjw .4 Lift ev'ry voice and sing, that with tears has been watered; till earth and heaven ring, we have come, treading our path ring with the harmonies of liberty; through the blood of the slaughtered; let our rejoicing rise out from the gloomy past, high as the list'ning skies, till now we stand at last let it resound loud as the rolling sea. where the bright gleam of our bright star is Sing a song full of the faith cast. that the dark past has taught us; sing a song full of the hope God of our weary years, that the present has brought us; God of our silent tears, facing the rising sun you who have brought us thus far on the way; of our new day begun, you who have by your might let us march on till victory is won. led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray. Stony the road we trod, Lest our feet stray from the places, bitter the chast'ning rod, our God, where we met you; felt in the days when hope unborn had died; lest, our hearts drunk with the wine yet with a steady beat, of the world, we forget you; have not our weary feet shadowed beneath your hand, come to the place for which our people sighed? may we forever stand, We have come over a way true to our God, true to our native land. 2 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-weldon-johnson 3 Ibid. 4 SNMA Drexel, 2014. 2 A Reading from Genesis 24:58-67 (NRSV) Read the texts aloud. Pause and notice what image or phrase stands out or “shimmers” as you tell the story. And they called Rebekah, and said to her, "Will you go with this man?" She said, "I will." So they sent away their sister Rebekah and her nurse along with Abraham's servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, "May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads; may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes." Then Rebekah and her maids rose up, mounted the camels, and followed the man; thus the servant took Rebekah, and went his way. Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi, and was settled in the Negeb. Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field; and looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel, and said to the servant, "Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?" The servant said, "It is my master." So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. 3 A Reading from Song of Solomon 2:8-13 (NRSV) The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” ALL: The word of our Lord. Thanks be to God. Hymn 461 Breathe on Me, Breath of God TRENTHAM This prayerful hymn is our initial Pentecost response to reading aloud and hearing the word of God in worship.. With voices around the globe, we claim the Spirit’s embodied breath as that which sustains and enables us to hear the sacred Word and live into it until all souls are returned to health, safe, respected, and drawn into community. Sing or read it aloud as your prayerful response to the above text, or allow the quartet of voices from St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, Houston, TX, wash over you online at https://youtu.be/3qV_lHByYBk .5 Breathe on me, Breath of God, Breathe on me, Breath of God, Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew, until my heart is pure, so shall I never die, that I may love the way you until my will is one with yours, but live with you the perfect life love, to do and to endure. for all eternity. and do what you would do. Will You … The act of consent, this simple imbued respect of asking another person if they are willing to be a party to any action or decision, invites us to consider how such an act may be healing and re- humanizing. Before her brothers would give their blessing to the proposed arranged marriage of their sister Rebekah to Isaac, they sought her willing consent to entertain the contract. She was not to be property exchanged but to be a willing spouse with Isaac. Her humanity and dignity were honored. And the arranged marriage entered willingly and respectfully, became a love-match. • When has my consent been assumed or not asked for—a decision made without me? How did this disregard impact my relationships? How did it make me feel within the situation? • Whole groups of people have endured such dehumanizing treatment with little to no societal or community-level regard for their thoughts, opinions, feelings, or preferences. Decisions about where they may live, what work they may seek, what education is available to them, where they are accepted socially, and whether they are accepted in religious communities as leaders or even members have been made often without their ability to speak. As a child of God’s enduring goodness, what one action may I do this week to restore another person’s ability to give or withhold consent? 5 https://www.smumc.org/ 4 Hymn Near to the Heart of God MCAFEE From Missouri, Cleland Boyd McAfee (1866-1944) was a Presbyterian minister, theologian, and hymn writer. He was a professor, choral director, and dean of Park College before serving as pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Chicago and then Lafayette Avenue Church in Brooklyn.