July 26, 2020
- Flowers: Patty Savely
- Prelude: Rosemary Nettrouer
- Hymn: Come Christians Join to Sing
- Message: Worship at the Time of Parting
- Scripture: Colossians 3:1-17
Good morning and welcome! Thank you to Patty Savely for the flowers and Rosemary Nettrouer for the music. I understand the flowers are in loving honor of Gil and Emily Jackson’s wedding anniversary, July 27, 1948.
- If you have announcements or prayer requests, please feel free to add them as comments on the Facebook page.
Announcements
- We are live streaming and not gathering at the church for worship beyond the end of July. When the numbers start trending in the right direction, Ministry and Counsel will reevaluate.
- Feel free to share our worship with your Facebook friends by posting a link on your page.
- Also, the live streaming is available on Facebook and the church website (wichitaquakers.org) simultaneously, so you can watch at either location, and the written transcript is added to the post on Monday.
- During the live streaming, we have room for a few people to come and serve as a kind of facing bench. If you would like to be among a handful of people who worship with us in person, please be sure and let the office know.
- Among church activities this week
- The 205 Sunday School class meets today at 3:00 via Zoom.
- The Book Club meets Tuesday at 6:30, and people may join in person in the church library or via Zoom.
- I will be on vacation from July 30th through August 10th.
- Randy Mullikin will bring the message on August 2.
- Andrea Suttle will present a recognition of graduates and a devotional message on August 9.
- If you have pastoral care or other concerns, please contact Pam Chambers.
Congregational Hymn #64: “Come, Christians Join to Sing”
Prayer Concerns
- Gordon and Joan Smith
- Gordon has an ear infection, loss of appetite, and a recurrence of cancer. He will have a PET scan to determine the extent of the cancer on July 31.
- Joan is tired.
- Those who are struggling during this time of pandemic
- Our church during this time of transition
Prayer
God of compassion and justice, we open our hearts to you.
We pray for Gordon and Joan Smith.
We pray for those who are struggling during this pandemic. Some days, God, we are so done with this virus! And many of the things that usually bring us comfort are not available to us – being with people at church, hugging our neighbors, browsing the library shelves, and many more. Remind us on those bad days that you are still with us, no matter how isolated we are. Remind us, too, that if a hot mask or a closed church are the biggest of our problems, then we are privileged.
We pray for those whose pandemic struggles are lack of a job and the possibility of being hungry or homeless. We pray for those whose pandemic struggles mean sickness and death.
We pray for our church. May we find clarity and energy for the tasks at hand and the decisions we will need to make. May we find ways to use our assets wisely and well. May we become a beacon of love in our world.
Message
As many of you know, yesterday’s Representative Gathering at Mid-America Yearly Meeting’s Ministry Conference marked the end of our church’s membership in Mid-America Yearly Meeting. Only official representatives were allowed to attend that gathering, but I understand that a recording of the Zoom meeting will be available on Mid-America’s website.
Also, our representatives were not given an opportunity to speak. Instead, Diana Hoover, the clerk of Mid-America’s representatives read the letter we sent in mid-June and offered a prayer. Diana told me that they would prepare an official minute of our decision, as we had requested.
The letter we sent is posted on the church website, and several people have left messages of compassion and affirmation there. Yesterday, one person left this comment on our church Facebook page: “I am so sorry that you were given an ultimatum to choose a Yearly Meeting. I’m sorry that you had no voice at the Representative Session this afternoon. You all are family to me, and I appreciate and value you.”
My intention for our time together this morning is to provide, as someone said in conversation this week, a place of grief, letting go and finding peace. Please, whether this time of parting is significant to you or not, hold us and this time in God’s Light.
This morning, I don’t think it’s necessary for me to read the letter we sent. I do note that University Friends Meeting had been a part of Kansas, now Mid-America, Yearly Meeting for more than 100 years and affiliated also with Nebraska, now Great Plains, Yearly Meeting for about 50 years. Earlier this year, Mid-America’s elders made clear that our dual affiliation would no longer be allowed. So, our membership in Mid-America Yearly Meeting has come to an end.
In email correspondence with Diana Hoover this week, she shared with me the prayer that the elders approved for her to offer during the Representatives Gathering, and I will share it with you. May you hear Diana’s prayer as she offered it yesterday.
Our Dear Heavenly Father,
We ask your special blessing this day upon University Friends Church, their leaders specifically and their entire congregation. We come to you this day in a spirit of humbleness.
We want to thank you for the long-term relationship that Evangelical Friends here in Mid America have enjoyed with University Friends Church over the past 100 years. Thank you for each individual member and what they mean to each one of us personally. We wish to express our deep sorrow for the loss of our formal partnership in ministry, but we are thankful that our friendships will continue.
Father, we don’t always understand why things change. We acknowledge that change is part of life and we can grow through change. We ask that you come to each person from University Friends and help them to feel the love and support we have for them now and in the future. We ask for your blessings to be upon them, and their ministry, as they move forward as a congregation and with Friends United Meeting. We pray that their relationship there will bring unity and peace to them. Lord, please bless them as they follow Your will and Your plan for their church.
We pray all of us as Friends will remain faithful to the call You have placed upon each one of our lives, that each church represented here today will seek to honor you through our shared ministry. We trust You to continue to lead us through the hard times we are in now and in the future good times as well.
May Your Presence be felt each day in order for us to lead with Your guidance.
Forgive us as we stumble and help us to forgive others in a way that honors You.
We ask Father that You guide, protect and bless the entire Friends movement here in our country and around the world. In Jesus Name, Amen.
Love and care, sadness and blessing, humility and a need for forgiveness are in that prayer.
In addition to Diana’s prayer, Patty Savely is going to share the message she prepared but didn’t get a chance to bring to yesterday’s Representatives Gathering, plus some thoughts reflecting on yesterday:
My name is Patty Savely, daughter of Gil and Emily Jackson with a family Quaker history dating before great grandparents. I’ve been a member of Friends churches beginning with North Wichita Friends Church before they grew into Northridge. At the time when we moved our membership as a family to University Friends around the year 1965, I was drawn to the ministry of UFM even at that young age because of their acceptance of love for people who held different beliefs. At the time I was in Jr High, [and] the church’s youth leader held class that studied different faiths. I believe this began my growth to become the person I am today. Part of the Quaker teachings I grew up with are the Quaker Spices, which include peace and equality.
I have always considered EFC-MA a part of my extended church family. I find the recent decision of EFC-MA to force this ultimatum to be very hurtful as do many others at University Friends Meeting.
The differences between the recent Executive Council of Evangelical Friends Church North America affirmed statement on marriage and sexuality and the Great Plains Yearly Meeting approved statement of inclusion means to me decisions being made as to who is acceptable to do God’s work. I believe Christians all have a responsibility to do God’s work.
The ultimatum forced on us by EFC-MA to choose between GPYM and EFC-MA is a replay of the churches and missions of the past when coming with the intent of sharing Christ’s message while at the same time lacking any tolerance or respect of differences.
The choice of University Friends Meeting to continue affiliation with both EFC-MAYM and GPYM is in line with our emphasis on Christ’s teachings. At this time, if this is not possible to continue with EFC-MAYM, then I do feel our decision to continue with GPYM is in keeping with and is maintaining the focus on the teachings of Christ at a time when the world’s teachings are pulling our emphasis away from Christ. It is not our choice to leave EFC-MA, and I pray that the decision to continue with GPYM fulfills this focus for me and for University Friends as a church.
The anger is gone. Sad remains. This is a major surgery – a loss.
I’m sorry things have come to this. The loss is felt by many of both yearly meetings. For me, the anger is gone because of being prayed for, I’m sure, also, because the decision made by the Executive Council is following Christ’s leading for them. This action on their part has caused many heartaches for Evangelical Friends as well as UFM. The anger will continue; the pain will continue; and we all need to find a way in our hearts to allow the circumstances to work for God. Forgiveness is necessary, and those of us who know Earlene Mevey will benefit from remembering Benny Mevey’s amazing example and lessons of forgiveness following violence committed against him. Emphasis on that kind of forgiveness and grace can benefit and support growth for University Friends. Prayer that we can move from this hurt into growth and work as a church that can be even stronger and more focused than before this loss.
For me, I remind myself repeatedly through this that God has a plan. It is His plan with many parts; these parts are not the same for University Friends as they are for Evangelical Friends, except that as long as we continue seeking His guidance, we can be assured we are working within God’s plan, only in a different way.
I feel encouraged that with this change, we can renew and refocus our strengths as individuals and as a church.
Thank you, Patty.
So here we are, witnessing and experiencing the end of a long-standing relationship. Some of us are sad. Some of us are angry. Some of us are relieved. Some of us are all of those and more.
As we give attention to this moment, I will offer queries or questions and allow time for reflection as I go.
Let us take time this morning to examine our wounds. How has the relationship with Mid-America Yearly Meeting hurt you?
What are you angry about? Over what issues in this relationship does your spirit cry out for justice?
What are you losing as this relationship ends? What are you grieving?
Whatever you are feeling, whatever fills your heart, lift it up to God. Hold it in open hands, and receive God’s love and comfort.
Let us take time this morning to examine our own responsibility. We know that sometimes what angers us in another is also a part of us. May we own that part of ourselves and let God’s Light reveal those places that are hidden.
Where have we fallen short of mutual love and respect?
Where have we been guilty of self-righteousness and a sense of our own superiority?
Where have we misused our power and exercised it as power over others?
Where has pride kept us from seeing our own shortcomings?
Where has fear kept us from acknowledging and exercising our gifts?
In what ways might we have been a source of division rather than the bridge we hoped to be?
In whatever ways you are feeling responsible for being less than what God has wanted for you, lift them up to God. Open those areas to receive God’s grace and forgiveness.
As we forgive ourselves, let us consider the possibility of forgiveness toward Mid-America Yearly Meeting. We don’t want to be too quick to forgive, so that we deny our woundedness. Nor do we want to be too slow to forgive, so that we end up harboring bitterness.
I find these words helpful, written by Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, posted by my son on Facebook last December:
Our injuries can be like warm blankets that we wrap around ourselves — and our grief and our pain and our trauma; and they stop us, if we wrap them tightly enough around ourselves, from feeling vulnerable to the world. And I came to see that, until I was willing to let go of those blankets of grief and fear and rage and anger and shame, that I actually couldn’t experience the world. And for me, that letting go is a profound description of what forgiveness is, and that’s the moment that one moves from grief into the transformative power of mourning, in the context of having a future.
And central to that is getting off your own self-righteous pedestal and recognizing that the flaws that you’re wrestling with in everyone else live in you, as well. And we could all use a little bit more humility, if we want to move forward, about our own failings. That changes the whole stage, when you talk about your own brokenness, rather than how you’re right, and the people that make you crazy are wrong. –Serene Jones (posted by Michael Sherman, 12/8/19)
I am wondering whether this congregation has some of that stuff – grief or pain or trauma, with the feelings of “fear and rage and anger and shame” that go along with them. If so, let’s work at letting those go, not too quickly and not too slowly, but living into the reality of our own brokenness so that we can move forward in ways that are healthier.
Listen to Colossians 3:1-17, from The Message:
3 1-2 So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.
3-4 Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. …
5-8 And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. … It wasn’t long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it’s all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.
9-11 Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with [the Creator’s] label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
12-14 So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
15-17 Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God … every step of the way.
Put on compassion and kindness, humility and quiet strength. Love. Peace. Thankfulness.
Let God’s healing Light surround and enter your heart. May we be resurrected to fuller life, as individuals and as a congregation.
Oh, God, teach us humility. Teach us honesty and integrity. Teach us compassion. Teach us forgiveness. Teach us justice. Teach us peace. May we find ways to be beacons of your love.
Open worship
Please join together in a time of open worship, communion after the manner of Friends. If you feel led to contribute, please do so via comments on this page or the Facebook page.
We are meeting in person and also streaming our sermons on Facebook at 10:00 AM CST. Watch live:
https://www.facebook.com/universityfriendschurch/
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