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Sunday, August 21, 2011
Choose with Care
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Esther 3:7-15; Matthew 15: 1-20 Most of us, I am sure, will remember that old children's game called Quaker ladies (or telephone, Chinese whispers, broken cord) that demonstrated two important things: First, how long does it take for any sentence, phrase, or word to go around in a circle of people; and, secondly, more importantly, how does that sentence, phrase, or word change from the first person to the last. Children giggle as they hear the changes. But that children's game indicates how a simple story about anything or any one can change, sometimes with devastating consequences. We see it every day in the supermarket tabloids or on the internet: simple stories usually about those people we call celebrities that are, at the least, invasions of privacy, and at the most, nasty...
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AT: 08/21/2011 08:30:23 AM
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Sunday, August 14, 2011
Send Them Away
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Isaiah 56: 1-8; Matthew 15: 21-28 The middle aged lady sat in front of the Congressional Committee considering the Wagner-Rogers bill to permit 20,000 Jewish children entry into the United States above the strict quota system that had prevented many Jews from finding refuge in America. Representing the Daughters of the American Revolution, that august body so brilliantly satirized by the political cartoonist Herblock, she warned, “Yes, but these little children will grow up to be Jews!” Soundly defeated in committee by the summer of 1939, the State Department's visa section led by nativist Breckenridge Long, continued to tighten the noose even more on the desperate Jews seeking refuge from Germany including forcing the ship St. Louis to return to Germany condemning its passengers to certain death. The...
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AT: 08/14/2011 08:30:43 AM
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Sunday, April 24, 2011
Living as if Easter Mattered
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Psalm 116; Matthew 28: 1-10As a young child I both anticipated and dreaded Easter. My anticipation was a child’s anticipation: the basket of candy with a chocolate Easter bunny, but it came at a price: My mother would drag me shopping for a suitable church dress, something frilly and "feminine," as she put it, which was okay, but then the moment of dread was her insistence that I have ringlets a la Shirley Temple. That meant I had to have these old hot irons put against my head to get the desired look. Back in the fifties of the last century -- oh, my goodness, did I really say last century? -- that was how we all lived. When I once asked her why I had to suffer just to satisfy God, though I wondered if it was God I had to satisfy or my mother, on Easter Sunday, she ...
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AT: 04/24/2011 08:30:28 AM
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Sunday, March 27, 2011
Samaritans in Our Midst
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Psalm 96; John 4: 5-30When I was ten years old I went with my parents on a family vacation to St. Augustine, Florida. As most Americans, having been raised on the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown stories of how the brave English weathered the storms of Virginia and New England to plant the seeds of what became our nation, I remember my surprise when I learned that St. Augustine had been the site of the first permanent European settlement on the North American continent. Established in 1565, it predated Jamestown by forty years. As English settlements in America moved farther south, conflicts began to arise between the Spanish colony and the English ones exacerbated by old hatreds based on religion and conflicts back in Europe. The fact that Florida sheltered escaped slaves provided they declare themselves ...
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AT: 03/27/2011 08:30:30 AM
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Sunday, October 03, 2010
Mustard Seeds of Justice
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Amos 5: 14-24; Luke 17: 5-10“Jumping off the gw bridge sorry” was the simple, one line comment on Tyler Clementi’s Facebook page. Outed in a most humiliating way through a video posted on the internet by his roommate, this brilliant young musician simply could not face going on with his life. And he’s not the only one. Seth Walsh, bullied by his classmates because of his suspected sexual orientation, hanged himself but lingered for nine days on life support before he died; he was 13 years old. In Cypress, Texas, another 13-year old, Asher Brown, shot himself for much the same reason. The list goes on and on. Three hundred years ago it was possible to flee a society out to get you by leaving Massachusetts Bay and settling in the marshlands of New Jersey. But the world has not only grown smaller....
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AT: 10/03/2010 08:33:50 AM
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