I had another prayer prepared for today. It was loaded in my email and ready to send.
Last night, after the Session meeting, I learned about three Asian American friends who had recently experienced acts of hate. No one was hurt, thank God. But that is not always the case. There are at least reported hate incidents in New York City in which people have been injured. Again, thank God, the injuries have not been serious. But – all such behavior is inconsistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the reality that all people are made and loved by God.
Clearly this situation worked on me overnight. This morning the following came out.
A prayer God for all the world, we give thanks for your work of creation. You make all that is and call it good. You make the human creature in a wondrous array of diversity: all in your image, all beloved by you. Pour your Holy Spirit upon us and upon all people that we might: give thanks for the diversity you create, honor all people, welcome the diversity you create as a gift that enriches and blesses us all. Lead our community, our city, our nation, and all nations and peoples to reject hate and to embrace love. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Affirmation for the time of Covid-19 3/19/2020
As well as I am able (and when I know better, I will do better) I reject racism and white supremacy and will work to disrupt it; I reject “othering,” scapegoating, belittling, demeaning of any person or any group of people; I reject violence directed against a person or group of people because of their perceived race, ethnicity, nationality, or any other factor.
As well as I am able (and when I know better, I will do better) I affirm the worth and dignity of every person; I give thanks for the Asian Americans, Asians, and Pacific Islanders who I know, and who I have never met—I am grateful that I can share this community, this country with you; I give thanks for the Asian Americans, Asians, and Pacific Islanders who have entrusted me with your friendship and trusted me to be your pastor—I am honored, I hold you in my heart, I see you in my mind’s eye, I am grateful for you.
As well as I am able (and when I know better, I will do better) I confess that I have often fallen short of my own affirmations, my own aspirations; I commit to picking myself up when I fall short and continuing to work for a community, a country, and a world where everyone is welcome and justice and equity reign.
*****
Note: this is an affirmation for this moment. Other moments would elicit other affirmations.
Note two: my blog, my rules. Any comments I deem objectionable will be deleted. No questions. No debate.
Light a candle. It may be real. It may be imaginary. When the candle is lit, pray the following prayer:
God, I open myself to your grace. May this candle remind me of your abiding presence in this place and in all places; may this candle remind me of Christ’s unfailing love for me and for all people; may this candle remind me of the Holy Spirit’s sustaining love in this and all circumstances. Amen.
Lift up to God the challenges and problems you face. Ask God for what you need. Give thanks to God for the good things in your life.
Please pray for those involved in education: teachers, aides, librarians, custodians, bus drivers, security personnel, students, parents, family–everyone involved in education. May God provide them strength and grace at this challenging time.
Please pray for Silvia and the family and friends of Silvia’s son who died recently. May God comfort them as they walk death’s shadowed valley.
Sit with the candle as long as you would like. Then, with a breath of kindness, blow it out.
Written by W. Mark Koenig
Check out this video resource for these days. Rest assured the video quality will get better as I work with it more.
What’s Our Thing? John 4:4-30 First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone 15 March 2020 The Rev. W. Mark Koenig
I don’t know about you, but I have learned, or relearned, a great deal so far during this age of Covid-19 in the United States.
I have learned, or relearned, about superheroes. They don’t all wear tights and capes.
A portrait of the author as superhero. No tights were involved
Superheroes wear medical gear. Nurses, doctors, technicians, researchers, medical care providers of all sorts.
Superheroes wear work clothes. Janitors. Custodians. Cleaning services. Carry bottles of disinfectant and sanitizer. Clean our public places. Clean our streets. Check out our groceries. Deliver meals. Deliver packages.
Superheroes wear uniforms. EMTs. Police. Firefighters. First responders of all shapes and size. Those who serve in our military.
The people – all the people – who often labor in obscurity in ways I cannot remember or imagine or name this morning to make life better, fuller, more whole for us – they are the superheroes. They are your neighbors, whether you know their names or nor. They are your family. They are seated around you. They are you.
I have learned, or relearned, about systems.
We need a health care system that allows all people access.
We need a public health system that can respond quickly, nimbly, creatively in moments of crisis and protects us all.
We need an employment system that provides medical leave for all people and assists hard working people who fall on hard times.
We need a housing system that provides a safe place for all people. That system must protect people who may receive abuse instead of love in their homes.
We need a criminal justice system that protects the public at large but also respects the dignity and protects the lives of offenders.
We need an economic system so structured that elected officials have no concern that closing schools will result in children going hungry. An economic system that responds to the needs of people more quickly than it responds to the corporations.
I have learned, or relearned, about accepting responsibility.
At 7:09 pm on April 12, 1945, the owner of a failed haberdashery from Independence, Missouri, who had only a high school education, was sworn in as President of the United States. On his desk, he placed a sign that read, “The buck stops here.” And while Harry S. Truman served as president the buck did stop there.
I have learned, or relearned, that while none of us can do everything, all of us can do something.
Zion Williamson is 19 years old. He plays basketball for the New Orleans Pelicans in the NBA. He makes more in one month from salary and endorsements than most people will earn in a lifetime. The NBA suspended the season on Wednesday. On Friday, Zion Williamson announced he would pay the salary of every Smoothie King Center employee – that’s where the Pelicans play – he would pay their salary for the next 30 days. Other players and teams have made similar gestures–both basketball teams and hockey teams. My son Eric’s favorite player – Kevin Love appears to have been the first – “Love” – how about that for fulfilling your name. Still one thing sets Zion Williamson apart. He is 19 years old.
My guess is that none of us here make $10 million dollars a year. None of us has a list of endorsements longer than today’s bulletin. None of us own a sports team.
But all of us can do something.
My friend from high school, Nancy, suggests we make care packages for the 90-year-olds who live in our neighborhoods. Toilet paper. Lysol. Hand sanitizer. Leave it anonymously. If we are caught, Nancy suggests that the appropriate response is “Please let me know if you need anything else.”
Yzette, who I work with at the presbytery, has posted an offer on Facebook. Anyone who needs anything for their children can contact her and she will do whatever she can to help.
Phil and Samson eat in Chinatown on a regular basis to support the restaurants and their employees. (Note: this was written before it was announced that restaurants would close except for deliveries and take-outs as of Tuesday, March 17).
The First Presbyterian Church of Hastings, Nebraska has initiated a “meal ministry.” People are invited to double the recipe when they make a meal Half they eat. Half goes into the freezer. Appropriately packaged. When they hear of someone who has fallen ill, or someone who is homebound due to a quarantine or fear of going out, they deliver it to them. They are encouraged to include a note and a prayer with each meal they deliver.
In the moments before this service began, the Deacons of the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone voted to make a gift to support the work of City Harvest to rescue food to share with people who know hunger in New York.
None of us can do everything. Each of us can do something.
We see that in our Gospel reading from John.
A woman. A Samaritan woman encounters Jesus at a well.
At a time when men did not interact with women. Especially with no one else present. At a time when tensions tangled relationships between Jews and Samaritans. Jesus talks with her. Jesus talks with her.
They talk about her life. Jesus knows everything. And there is a lot to know.
They talk about living water. About life. Abundant, eternal, whole life.
The woman is transfixed. The woman is transformed.
And she knows the blessings that Jesus bestows are not just for her. They must be shared. She returns to her city to tell her friends, to tell anyone who would listen, to come and see Jesus.
None of us can do everything. Each of us can do something. And that was the Samaritan woman’s thing. She had an experience of such power and wonder and grace that she simply had to share. To tell people about Jesus. To encourage people to meet Jesus.
Some in her city came to believe because of her testimony about Jesus. More came to believe when they made the trek to the well and met him for themselves.
None of us can do everything, but each of us can do something.
As we live in this age of Covid-19, the challenge, the opportunity, the invitation we face, as individuals and as the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone is to ponder the question, “What’s our thing?” And when our discernment leads us to clarity, then we are called to act – and to do the something God calls us to do. By the grace of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and the company of Jesus and all the saints, may we so live.
Matthew 5:13-20 Where is the salt? 9 February 2020 The First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone The Rev. W. Mark Koenig
Whenever I hear our passage from Matthew, I have flashbacks to the Great Salt Panic of 2015. You remember that, don’t you? No? Here’s a refresher.
Tricia, Eric, and Essie came to New York to celebrate the holiday with Sean and me. We decided to eat at my apartment because I had a full-size oven. Tricia did the cooking. At some point, she opened the food pantry and asked, “Where is the salt?”
The salt.
Silence hung in the air as I framed my response. Years ago, I gave up adding salt to food. I did not give up salty foods. If you attended our October feast and counted the pretzels I ate, you know that. But I have not added salt to food either in cooking or on my plate for many years.
Where is the salt? Not in my apartment.
This posed a problem to whatever Tricia was making. She called Sean. On his way uptown, he stopped at a Duane Reade and bought some salt. Thanksgiving dinner proved a success. And that container of salt remains in the pantry. A full shaker sits on the table. Waiting for Tricia or the kids to come and use them.
Salt has a long and interesting history. It was once traded for gold. The early Chinese used coins of salt and in Europe some Mediterranean people used cakes of salt as currency.[i] During the time of the Roman Empire, and throughout the Middle Ages, salt carried such value that it was sometimes called “white gold.” Roman soldiers sometimes received pay in with salt instead of money. Because “sal” is the Latin word for salt, the soldiers monthly allowance became called “salarium”. Linguists say the process took a couple steps, but “salarium” eventually became “salary” in English.[ii] This then leads to the phrase that a worker is “worth her … salt.”
In India, the colonizing British passed a Salt Act in 1882 that prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt. The Indian people could only purchase salt from the British. Who exercised a monopoly over salt’s manufacture and sale … and who benefited from the tax. As is the case with most economic injustice, the people living in poverty suffered the most although everyone needed salt.[iii]
To challenge British rule, Mohandas Gandhi determined to break the Salt Act. He organized a 240-mile march to the sea in March of 1930. There marchers would make their own salt. Thousands of people marched to the sea where, in defiance to the empire, they made salt. The movement grew. Millions more began to break the Salt Act. The British arrested some 60,000, including Gandhi. At the Dharasana Salt Works, nonviolent protestors were brutally beaten by police. The British released Gandhi from prison in January of 1931. The Salt Act was not abolished. But Gandhi participated as a negotiator at a conference on India’s future. Those negotiations did not go well. But sixteen years later India and Pakistan received independence. The door to that independence pushed open by nonviolent direct action over salt.[iv]
My Uncle Pete lives near Syracuse. He reminds me of the role that salt played in the history of the city. Millions of years ago, a sea covered central New York. As the sea evaporated, it left behind deposits of salt. The Onondaga people who lived in the area knew something was going on with some of the water in the area. Salt production began in the 1770s and continued until about 1900. During much of that time, Syracuse was a major, if not the major salt, producer in the United States.[v] Uncle Pete will proudly tell you that Syracuse is “The Salt City.”
Salt melts ice. Softens water. Creates a solution that when gargled can soothe a sore throat. Flavors food and beverages. I remember as a child my grandparents encouraging me to use salt to brush my teeth.
At the time Jesus lived, salt flavored food. Salt helped purify or cleanses meats through the removal of blood. It was used to help heal or cleanse certain ailments. And it preserved certain foods—meat or fish among them. The use of salt as a preservative was essential until the invention of refrigeration. The people who lived in first century Palestine knew all these uses for salt.[vi]
Salt also had ritual and symbolic uses at the time. People used salt in offerings and sacrifices. The Hebrew Scriptures refer twice to a “covenant of salt.” In one instance, this covenant is made between God and the priests. In the other, God makes such a covenant with the kings. According to the New Oxford Annotated version of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, this image most likely refers to the perpetual nature of the covenant because of salt’s preservative nature.[vii]
“You are the salt of the earth.” When the people who heard them from Jesus, they recognized he had said something important. He provided the people with an understanding of who they were and how they were to be.
“You are the salt of the earth.” They carry meaning for us today. With these simple words, Jesus tells us who we are and how we are to live.
It is important that we pay close attention to the words. We need to understand why Jesus said and what Jesus did not say.
Jesus does not say, “If you want to be salt, you have to do this, that, and the other thing.” Jesus does not say, “I will call you salt, if I see you behave in these ways.
Like the Beatitudes we considered last Sunday, Jesus’ words bring no requirement or conditions. “You are the salt of the earth.” They are blessing. Affirmation. Commissioning. They were blessing, affirmation, and commissioning for those who heard the Sermon on the Mount. They were blessing, affirmation, and commissioning for those who have read the Sermon on the Mount. They are blessing, affirmation, and commissioning for us. “We are the salt of the earth.”
Yes, Jesus goes on to say that “if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”[viii]
Clearly Jesus never spent a winter in Western Pennsylvania. We trampled salt under foot many days. It was good. Often it was essential.
As I researched today’s sermon, I came across several authors who raised the question of “can salt lose its saltiness?” Or flavor or taste as some other versions of the Bible translate the term.[ix]
They answer salt does not. And if you have ever taken a sled down a blocked-off street in Western Pennsylvania and ended up in a snowbank where the salt truck had been, you would know. It still tastes like salt. These scholars believe that Jesus knew that salt does not lose its saltiness. And those who heard Jesus knew that salt does not lose its saltiness. They believe that by talking about “salt that has lost its taste,” Jesus underscores the reliability and resilience of the blessing he has bestowed. Lutheran pastor David Lose says Jesus tells his people, tells us: “You are the salt of the earth! That’s the way it is and that’s the way it will stay. Period.”
With this image, Jesus affirms our worth. We matter to Jesus. We matter to God. We have great value. God has gifted us and put us in this world to uses those gifts as well as we are able to flavor life with God’s justice, kindness, and love. The salt of the earth, we help preserve and bring healing and offer flavor according to God’s will. It is who we are. It is what we do.
What does it look like to live as salt?
Congressman John Lewis from Georgia is a man of profound and deep faith in Jesus Christ. At one point, he considered entering the ministry. In his graphic novel, March: Book One, Lewis writes that as he cared for the chickens on his family’ farm, he preached to the chickens.[x] He participated in the Nashville Student Movement[xi] and became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1963.[xii] He was one of the original Freedom Riders.[xiii] He spoke at the March on Washington, before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and after the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church.[xiv]
March: Book One
On March 7, 1965, civil rights activists began a march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama to call for full voting rights for all people. John Lewis led the march. The marchers crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma. There state troopers and a posse organized by the county ordered them to disperse. When the marchers did not, the “law enforcement” officials, including some on horseback, attacked with nightsticks and tear gas. Many marchers received severe beatings and injuries, including John Lewis.
Jump forward in time almost 55 years. On December 28, 2019 Congressman Lewis shared the news that he has Stage IV pancreatic cancer. He began his statement about the illness with these words: “I have been in some kind of fight – for freedom, equality, basic human rights – for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now.”[xv]
This past Thursday, the annual National Prayer Breakfast took place in Washington, DC. Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) received the invitation to deliver the closing benediction. He accepted, even though his fight against cancer meant that he had to appear by video.
As he spoke, Congressman Lewis quoted his friend and colleague, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “I have decided to stick with love, for hate is too heavy a burden to bear.” Congressman Lewis spoke of the brutal beating he endured in Selma. And then said, “But I never hated the people who beat me because I chose the way of peace, the way of love, and the way of nonviolence. For the God Almighty helped me.” His benediction ended with an admonition to the attendees, and to all the nation, to “go in peace, go in love, and we commit to treating each other as we would treat ourselves. Amen.”[xvi]
Peace.
Love.
Treating each other as we would treat ourselves.
That is how we live as salt, church. That is how we live as salt.
We may not have similar experiences to Congressman Lewis. But we have daily opportunities to live in peace, to love, and to treat each other as we would treat ourselves. We can love individually and as a congregation. We can love individuals and we can act for justice, love expressed in the public arena.
The First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone is the salt of the earth. We pray for one another, for our community, and for people and circumstances around God’s world. Aid people recovering from disasters. Support efforts to address gun violence and welcome refugees and provide food and water to the world. Help children in the Philippines enjoy a Christmas meal.
Individually, we can love and live in peace and treat people as we would like to be treated. We can love our neighbors – the people who live around us. We can help each other as we face challenges of life. Our work or our life at school can be done in kindness and in peace. We can listen patiently and prayerfully to one another in the pews around us, help meet each other’s needs, and serve Jesus together. And then we can do the really challenging ministry – loving our family, the people closest to us. That’s how Jesus commissions us to live.
Where is the salt? It’s you. It’s me. It’s us. By God’s grace, we are the salt of the earth. Amen.
Walking. Morningside Heights. Unless otherwise noted, all songs are by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Nkosi Sikelel ‘IAfrica House of Exile – Lucky Dube Mandela – Hugh Masekela Nelson Mandela – Special AKA Izithembiso Zenkosi Kubi Ukungalaleli Uphi Umhlobo Yimani Silgugu Isiphambano Limnandi Izulu Ayanqikaza Amagwala Isimanga Salomhlaba Ungikhumbule Udia Nge’nduku Zabanye Lifikile Ivangeli Induku Zethu Isono Sami Sentombi Nomathemba Mdube Inkanyezi Nezazi Shosholoza Halala South Africa Thula Thula Go Well and Peace Be with You Nkosi Sikelel ‘IAfrica
Among my favorite annual rituals is attending the U.S. Open (tennis) on Labor Day weekend with Sean, Eric, and Elizabeth. Tricia is invited but declines. Some of my New York friends have even gone along when we had a spare ticket or two.
If you follow my posts here and on Facebook, which I know everyone does faithfully, you know my mantra: “It is never just about the tennis.”
We gathered under the USS Maine Monument at the Merchants’ Gate entrance to Central Park on Columbus Circle.
We gathered to witness for peace and to say no to war with Iran and no to war everywhere. We gathered as did people on Foley Square in New York and in places around the country.
We chanted as we gathered. For a short time, the chant rang out “Call the witnesses.” The reference was to an impending trial in the Senate.
But consider calling …
… young people living in poverty who see no other option than military service …
… children who wonder when, and if, a parent will return …
… parents who grieve for a child killed in action …
… creation exploited and abused by preparation and perpetration of war …
… soldiers maimed in body, spirit, soul, and mind …
… noncombatants wounded and killed and dismissed as collateral damage …
… women harassed and violated …
… communities uprooted and driven from their homes …
… those denied educational opportunities and health care and food and water and housing and infrastructure because needed resources have been directed to preparing for and waging war …
Along the Graybeard Trail 
