Facts
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The homepage for the National
Alliance to End Homelessness (www.naeh.org) includes links to background
information, statistics, best practices, age appropriate fact sheets on homelessness for
students, and suggests what you can do. For background and statistics, visit www.naeh.org/back/index.htm.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition produces
an annual affordability gap study called Out of Reach.
Out of Reach 2002 offers a side by side comparison of wages and rent in
every county, metropolitan area and state in the country. www.nlihc.org/oor2002
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Resources
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An organization called Asset-based
Community Development Institute in Evanston, IL has excellent materials for
helping a church, or any community organization, map its neighborhood assets. The ABCD
Institute puts out a manual called “Building Community from the Inside Out.”
This manual as well as additional workbooks and videotapes are available from ACTA
Publications, 4848 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60640,
800-397-2282.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) offers the May/June
2001 issue of Church and Society as an excellent resource on the issue of
homelessness. This May/June 2001 issue of Church and Society can be found at http://horeb.pcusa.org/churchsociety/mayjune2001/default.htm.
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Resources for Worship, Sunday,
March 30,
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Facts
Current Issues
Get Involved
. . . Take Action
Stories
Resources
Worship Resources
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Facts
Current Issues
Get Involved
. . . Take Action
Stories
Resources
Worship Resources
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Prayer of Confession
God, our help in every age, help us now. We admit we are afraid to practice the hospitality
and welcome you expect of us. When someone in
need approaches, we shrink away. Is it fear? Is it guilt? Or is it that all of a sudden
our own neediness is awakened? Help us to cultivate that place inside each of us where we
remember our home is with You -- a home that is warm, where things always work out in the
end, and where love has the final word. We
want to share your grace with others. Help us to be the bearers of your grace in every act
of care, in every act of welcome. Amen.
Litany of Commitment (based on Nehemiah 5:1- 13)
Leader: We have to
borrow money on our fields and vineyards to pay our taxes.
People: We are taking interest from our
own people.
L: We have had to mortgage our fields, our
vineyards and our houses in order to get grain during the famine.
P: We will restore to them, this very
day, their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards and the interest on the money.
L: We are forcing our sons and daughter to be
slaves and some of our daughters have been ravished.
P: We have been selling our own kin!
L: We are powerless; our fields and vineyards
now belong to others.
P: We promise to restore everything
and demand nothing more from them.
All: May God shake out everyone
from house and from property who does not perform this promise. And the people did as they
had promised. Amen.
On the Lectionary: March 30, 2003, Fourth Sunday in Lent
From the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B
From the Micah 6 Prayer and Devotional Guide, Written by the Rev. Noelle Damico
Devotion: Uncomfortable Stories of
Salvation (Numbers 21:4-9)
The Israelites are exhausted from meager food and continuous journey. They entertain romantic memories of slavery in
Egypt, where at least there was guaranteed food despite the brickyard toil. They complain against God and Moses, accusing them
of bringing the Israelites to the wilderness to die.
Presumably upset by this backlash of feeling, God sends poisonous
serpents to bite the complainer! After the
frightened people who are still alive repent, God instructs them to make a bronze serpent
and have those who were bitten stare at it to be healed.
The author of Numbers doesn’t tell us what happened, but the logic of
the story leads to the assumption that they were revived.
Today’s lectionary reading begins part way through the story of
the Israelites journey from Egypt through the Negeb.
The first four verses of chapter 21 are even more disturbing than this
magical-cultic story of the snakes. Here we
see the Israelites making a vow to God that if God give the Canaanite people of this
region into their hands, that they will “utterly destroy their towns.” Numbers recounts that God listened and gave the
Canaanites over to the Israelites who “utterly destroyed them and their towns.”
In the story of the snakes, the text invites the readers to remember
that God is sovereign and powerful. In the story of the massacres and razing, the text
invites the reader to understand God as preferring on people to another and intervening in
battle on behalf of the Israelites. Every
generation is called to interpret God’s word in light of present challenges and
understandings. How are we to understand these uncomfortable stories of salvation that
have been passed down to us? This week
consider how Scripture is God’s word to you. Are
there times when you disagree with what seems to be it’s teaching? How do you live faithfully with your questions? Pray for churches to interpret Scripture
faithfully in teaching and in their life together.
Micah 6 for Kids!
The church is now celebrating the season of Lent. Lent is the time from Ash Wednesday until Easter
Morning. It is a time when we think about how
difficult it can be to follow Jesus. We take
time to think about the ways we have lived as God wishes, and also those times when we
have not. We offer our hopes and our sorrows
to God and trust that nothing, not even our wrongs and mistakes, can stop God’s love. In the story about the snakes from Numbers, even
the Israelites who complained, and who were bit by snakes for their complaining, were
finally healed by God at the end of the story. These
days we don’t think that God sends snakes to bite people when they are bad. But we do think that God helps people to see how
they are wrong and to change. Sometimes our
family helps us see when we are wrong. Other
times our friends or our church shows us that what we’ve done is not right. Sometimes
we feel deep inside that we’ve not acted our best --
nobody even has to tell us.
God works through others and ourselves to show us our wrongs so that
we can change. The point isn’t to make
us feel bad or to scare us or to punish us. God
wants us to look at things that we have done wrong so that we can see how to live
differently. In Lent we look at the things
that we’ve done wrong ourselves and as a church, even though we may feel embarrassed
or ashamed, because we believe that nothing, nothing can stop God’s love for us. We can look at these things and work on changing
because we believe that God will help us and give us the strength to start over.
© 2000 Noelle Damico Publishing Co., 17 Dyke Rd., Setauket,
NY 11733
For Micah 6 resources visit www.micah6.org
or call Nancy Theoharis at 1-877-MICAH 6-0.
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