Pinch-hitting for Synod School preacher the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, the Rev. Stephanie Anthony, who’s recently been installed as the lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, Pennsylvania, brought God’s Word during a rollicking worship service that featured organ music by 102-year-old Mary Conklin.
Anthony used Isaiah 41:9–10 and 2 Kings 5:1–4 as preaching texts.
On a day when Synod Schoolers were looking at how to boost their courage, the Rev. Cathy Kolwey used the children’s time to ask the youngest attendees what they’re afraid of. Responses included spiders, getting lost, small spaces, roller coasters, rats and being late.
Kolwey, director of chaplaincy at Auburn Homes and Services in Minnesota, admitted her fear of math. “But I know with God’s help I can overcome my fear of math,” she told the children, displaying two equations to prove her point. The first was Fear-Fear=Courage and had a line striking it out. The second was Fear+God=Courage. She then prayed, telling God, “When we add you to the equation, that’s where courage comes from.”
Beginning with the 2 Kings text, Anthony noted the girl is not named, “just as we haven’t known the names of countless girls like her for millennia.” She’s a captive from Israel, which had just suffered a defeat on the battlefield. “She is a nobody in a story about power players, and still she speaks up for someone in need of healing.”
“Society tries to tell us what power looks like. It doesn’t look like a young girl who’s been taken to the ends of the Earth,” Anthony said. “Power looks like riches and wealth, people with enough connections to bend the rules to cover their indiscretions.”
This kind of corrupt power “sees itself as the only reliable source of truth,” she said. “It’s born of greed and selfishness and an undeserved sense of self-importance.”
Asked to heal the army commander Naaman, the king of Israel “assumes the other king is trying to make a fool of him. His privilege is showing,” Anthony said, “as is his ignorance and arrogance, when he doesn’t seem to know Elisha in his own land.”
That kind of power “is alluring and intoxicating, but it’s not from where true healing flows in God’s kin-dom,” she said. That kind of healing “looks more like the witness of a nameless girl. It looks like listening to the needs of the person right in front of you. It looks like the courage of a girl who draws on wisdom, power and strength of the community to bring healing to one who suffers.”
The girl “gathers her courage and speaks of what she knows is true,” she said. “Even when the healing has no positive impact on her life, she uses the only thing she had in that moment: her voice.”
“What would it look like, church, if we took on this kind of courage? If we were willing to put everything on the line to do the right thing?” Anthony asked. “What would it look like if we were to do the scary thing and speak to what we know is true about how God loves and desires health and dignity for everyone? How the Spirit calls us to transform the systems that do harm to the least of these?”
As a result of the current political strife, “many of us these days are feeling like we’re lost in the farthest corners of the Earth,” Anthony said. But Isaiah’s words help us find hope: “you whom I took from the ends of the Earth and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant; I have chosen you and not cast you off.’”
“If God calls us servants of the divine, God most certainly has something for us to do,” she said. “With courage, we speak to what we know is possible: healing and wholeness for all, and justice in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
After an offering to help fund scholarships for first-time attendees, Conklin took to the organ bench to play “How Firm a Foundation.” The congregation enjoyed singing along and gave her a long standing ovation when it was over.
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Lara Kirwan, Administrative Project Manager, President’s Office, Administrative Services Group
Maha Kolko, Project Manager, Community Outreach, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group
Let us pray:
God of hope and strength, thank you for your presence of love and compassion in our lives. We rejoice that, especially when we face the storms of life, you are there to calm us. Thank you for being our Lord and for speaking words we yearn to hear: “Peace! Be still!” In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
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