Exodus 5:1-2

First meeting with Pharaoh

5 Afterward, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the Lord, Israel’s God, says: ‘Let my people go so that they can hold a festival for me in the desert.’”

2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is this Lord whom I’m supposed to obey by letting Israel go? I don’t know this Lord, and I certainly won’t let Israel go.”

Exodus 7:8-23

Turning rods into snakes8 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 9 “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Do one of your amazing acts,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your shepherd’s rod and throw it down in front of Pharaoh, and it will turn into a cobra.’”[a]

JUNE 10, 2020 SPECIAL WEEKLY EDITIONJUNE 10, 2020 SPECIAL WEEKLY EDITION

THE SPIRE

OUR MISSION:Seeking, serving and growing with unconditional acceptance.

OUR VISION:Weaving a community of hope through connection.

Rev Alexis Johnson, Lead PastorRev. Mark Johnson, Assoc, Pastor

pastors@broadwayunitedmethodist.com

712-322-7741

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Sunday’s MessageMonday Update with PrayersChildren’s Ministry Update

PHARAOH HARDENS HIS HEART

This is my Father’s world, and to my listening earsThis is my Father’s world, and to my listening earsAll nature sings and ‘round me ringsAll nature sings and ‘round me rings

The music of the spheres.The music of the spheres.This Is My Father’s World vs. 1This Is My Father’s World vs. 1

United Methodist Hymnal #144United Methodist Hymnal #144

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PHAROAH HARDENS HIS HEART TO MOSES’ REQUESTSCeleste Grudle, Shelby United Methodist Church June 7, 2020

Continued on page 3

10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord com-manded. Aaron threw down his shepherd’s rod in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it turned into a cobra. 11 Then Pharaoh called to-gether his wise men and wizards, and Egypt’s religious experts[b] did the same thing by using their secret knowledge. 12 Each one threw down his rod, and they turned into cobras. But then Aaron’s rod swal-lowed up each of their rods. 13 However, Pharaoh remained stubborn. He wouldn’t listen to them, just as the Lord had said.

Water into blood14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh is stubborn. He still refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning. As he is going out to the water, make sure you stand at the bank of the Nile River so you will run into him. Bring along the shepherd’s rod that turned into a snake. 16 Say to him, The Lord, the Hebrews’ God, has sent me to you with this message: Let my people go so that they can worship me in the desert. Up to now you still haven’t listened. 17 This is what the Lord says: By this you will know that I am the Lord. I’m now going to hit the water of the Nile River with this rod in my hand, and it will turn into blood. 18 The fish in the Nile are going to die, the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians won’t be able to drink water from the Nile.” 19 The Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your shepherd’s rod and stretch out your hand over Egypt’s waters—over their rivers, their canals, their marshes, and all their bodies of water—so that they turn into blood. There will be blood all over the land of Egypt, even in wooden and stone containers.’”

20 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded. He raised the shepherd’s rod and hit the water in the Nile in front of Pharaoh and

his officials, and all the water in the Nile turned into blood. 21 The fish in the Nile died, and the Nile began to stink so that the Egyptians couldn’t drink water from the Nile. There was blood all over the land of Egypt. 22 But the Egyptian religious experts did the same thing with their secret knowledge. As a result, Pharaoh re-mained stubborn, and he wouldn’t listen to them, just as the Lord had said. 23 Pharaoh turned and went back to his palace. He wasn’t impressed even by this.

WHEN HUMANS UNRAVEL GOD’S PLANS FOR JUSTICE

Who was Pharaoh?

As we continue with our series Unraveled, today’s lesson has Moses and Aaron pleading with Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Pharaoh however has no intention of doing that so we are told, he hardens his heart. So what does that mean? Webster’s dictionary describes it as the heart that stops having kind or friendly feelings, it becomes callous and tough.

That certainly describes Pharaoh. He was just a gem of a guy that imposed all kinds of cruelty on people. I suppose that can be expected of a guy that worshiped idols made of brass and gold or wood or stone.

We all know people who are hardened don’t we? Perhaps the events in their lives have made them unkind or

ANTI-CREATION NARRITIVELauren Wright Pittman

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left them with no feelings but anger. We don’t just wake up one morning with our hearts hardened. It is so easy for an innocent heart to be slowly, steadily turned without the person even realizing it.

Look at the events that have transpired recently in Minneapolis. It all began with a shop owner accusing a man of color of attempting to pass a counterfeit bill. As I told my husband, the man may not have even known it was a bad bill. It may have been given to him by another merchant. The arresting officers obviously had their hearts hardened. The news reported that each one of them had pre-viously been investigated for use of excessive force. We all know now how that situation unraveled. Riots and more violence by people whose hearts are becoming hardened.

We see all through history different events that occur all because someone has hardened their heart. Cain and Abel, Sarai and Hagai, Saul and David, Joseph and his brothers. Jealousy can be a strong force in how a person feels.

Power is another. We’ve all known someone with that “Marge in Charge” attitude that believes they know what’s best for everyone. They humiliate, berate and degrade until you begin to feel intense dislike for them.

Greed, the more they have the more they want until their hearts are a cardiology nightmare!

There are those that bully and are mean spirited that turn the heart slowly like a hand lathed table leg until it is perfectly hardened and vengeful. They are so fearful that they will be found for what they are. Prideful, haughty and mostly weak and scared.

In Exodus 4, God Tells Moses He will harden Pharaohs heart. It is part of the lesson God is trying to teach Pha-raoh. In the article “The Liturgy of Abundance”, Walter Brueggeman writes that Pharaoh introduces the whole idea of scarcity. Pharaoh dreams of a great famine and so he begins to stockpile food, money, livestock, everything vital to the livelihood of the people. Recognize the symptoms? Power, Greed, Fear.

How awful to live that way! And yet many of us do. We work long hours to earn as much as we can, we buy, buy and buy more so that we will never run out. We covet what our neighbors have without even realizing it.

What does God want of us?

My dear family in Christ, this is not what God wants for us. The Lord wants us to guard our hearts! To love others as we love ourselves. As we look at how our lives have Unraveled the past several months we can easily see the abundance we have. We can see the compassion of others, our eyes are being opened to see the needs others have and we are stepping up to help meet them in many different ways.

We are distancing and yet at the same time we are reaching out to those who have been needing our atten-tion. We are spending time with our children instead of our co-workers. We are appreciating the ability to be outside and enjoy the beauty of the creation. Things we have taken for granted we are seeing in a new light. Visiting our parents is becoming a treat rather than a weekly chore. And returning to work, being with others has taken on a whole new perspective. We are discovering that all of our expectations are being met, just not in the way we had envisioned.

Pharaoh Hardens His Heart to Moses’ Requests, continued from page 2

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Pharaoh Hardens His Heart to Moses’ Requests, continued from page 3

REFLECT-What has unraveled and/or is unraveling in this story? (Exodus 5:1-2; 7:8-23- see pages 1 & 2)-To what, exactly, is Pharoah’s heart hardened? Why is he driven by power and control?-Artist Lauren Wright Pittman writes, “This narrative reveals to us how a person’s clinging to power can literally unravel creation.” In what ways is your heart hard-ened? What might it look like to soften your heart to actions and practices that cause harm?

WRITETheologian Water Bruggemann writes, “The book of Exodus records the contest between the liturgy of generosity and the myth of scarcity - a contest that still tears us apart today”* In the space below, confess the ways you fall for the myth of scarcity - in your finances, time, energy, relationships, work, etc. Then, imagine tangible ways to live out a liturgy of abundance in all aspects of your life.

PRAYSoften my hardened heart and unravel my from living a life led by scarcity. Amen.

My niece who is getting married at the end of the month will be just as married with 25 people present as she would have been with 250 people present. The graduates of this year will still have the same pride in their accomplishment and diploma as they would have if they were able to have the parties or to walk across the stage. It’s really not about how many people you can have with you but who you have with you.

I believe that God is always working for our good and that as long we have God first, no matter what He allows to happen we might learn from it and see His glory and justice in the process.

Amen? Amen

*Walter Brueggemann. “The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity.” Published on Religion ONline. Article first published in the Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999.

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Hi, Beloved. Reverend Alexis here, coming to you live with the Monday update. I apologize for being a little late. We were preparing worship already for this upcoming Sunday.

I have a couple of announcements, a couple of prayer requests, and then we will spend some time praying together. I wanted to first let you know some of the things that we’re doing around here to pivot. The COVID-19 crisis has lasted much longer than we anticipated. It’s going to last much longer than we hoped, so we are doing some things as a church to adjust so that we can continue building God‘s Kingdom here in Council Bluffs and reaching out to you in ministry.

Adjustments We Are MakingSome of those adjustments you’ve seen with our ability to go online. We need to continue to make adjust-ments so that when the building is ready to be open our online pieces don’t go away. That required some financial spending and it required some new learning on behalf of our staff and volunteers. It has also led to a decision to shift the ways that some of our staff work. Now before I let you know this, please know that we have not raised the budget at all. We are trying to hold the budget steady, but we are wanting to shift how our church is staffed just a little bit and shift the way we use our resources in light of all that’s happened over the last couple months.

You may have noticed there’s been a couple job listings. The first is we are looking for somebody to come and be the sound and media technician in the sound booth, to work on our soundboard, to make sure our sound quality going out over the internet is wonderful, and to be ready to help manage sound when we are ready to come back to inperson worship.

The other thing we are doing is we’re adjusting Teresa’s job. We’ve come to the recognition that Teresa has been doing four or five jobs for us. We are actually going to break them into two. So Teresa is going to keep doing the communications piece. Nothing is going to really change for her, but what we need is somebody to come in and run the office, to do hospitality, to manage the calendar, to really work on our database infor-mation that we have here and do some stuff with that. So if you’re interested in that type of work please let us know. We will send you out a job description. We’d love to see your resume and start to work on that.

Reopening With Small GroupsThe other thing I want to let you know about is I am recruiting small group leaders. We plan on coming back in the church with a primary focus on adult small groups and inter-generational small groups. So I am look-ing for folks who are willing to take a big flying leap out of their comfort zone, with a ton of support from Pastor Mark and I, with material about how to run small groups, but who might be willing to help host people as they gather here and have conversations. We can talk about whether we want studies or reflections on the sermons or accountability time. We’re open to anything at this point, but we’re looking for leaders who are ready to start being trained now so that when we move to yellow we can launch those small groups ASAP and get people back together connecting with one another.

MONDAY UPDATERev. Alexis Johnson - June 8, 2020

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Our policy has just been finalized and approved by the Church Council. Church Council has made some de-cisions about what life will look like at Broadway United Methodist Church as we stay in red for a while then move to yellow, where we will be for a long time. Eventually as we will head into green. And so, I invite you to take a look and know that that’s a thing that’ll probably change in light of information as we get it, but right now that’s the best information that we have. Please know that we will be paying attention to case num-bers and other information out of Pottawattamie County, Douglas County, and Sarpy County, because that is where a lot of our congregation comes from. So those are the three counties we’re gonna be watching. The Church Council is going to be a part of making the decisions. They’re actually gonna be the ones making the decision about when we move to yellow and eventually when we move to green, so be looking for that infor-mation and we’ll let you know as soon as we can.

I can tell you I’m excited to announce that if you decide as you come into the church if you would like a tem-perature check we will now have a no contact thermometer to help people with that. One will be available on every floor. We will also have a fabric safe sanitizing system, so if you think about starting a small group as you think about meeting here what we would ask after your group is done is that you spray down all the surfaces, including the fabric, and that the room would stay empty for at three hours between small groups. So we’ll be working with all of that as we move into yellow, when we move into yellow.

The last thing I wanted to announce to you and invite you to is this week, Wednesday at 6:45, Rev. Mark John-son will be leading a discussion about the movie, “Just Mercy”. Now “Just Mercy” has been made available to rent for free. If you want to purchase to own the last time I checked iTunes had it available for purchase for five dollars. And so, I would encourage you to go and watch this movie and join us in our discussion on Wednesday night. Rev. Mark and I have read the book and we will be watching the movie this week. I am in charge of the children, but I’m gonna be on the call on my phone and hopefully chiming in as I can into this really incredible and timely discussion that we could have, so I wanna invite you to come to that.

OK, that was an awful lot of business and I want to encourage you to keep looking at our emails and our newsletters and our websites and watching for announcements as they happen because it feels like things are changing daily. It feels like it’s been a year since we’ve been able to be together and we’re trying to gear up so that we can at least come together in small groups and connect with one another that way. Now I want us to take a breath and I want to share some prayer requests with you.

A Time for Prayer❤The first prayer request that I want to lift up is we’re experiencing increasing cases of COVID-19 and in Douglas County they’ve had their first case of multi-system inflammatory disease in children that’s associated with COVID-19. I want to be in prayer for people who are staying home to protect them-selves, for people who can’t stay home because it’s not a choice for them. That they would stay safe. ❤I want to be in prayer for her health workers and first responders who are dealing with this. For doc-tors and nurses, and for family members who are just anxious. For people that we love. ❤We want to lift it up to you Ken and Betty Milford. Ken and Betty Milford are transitioning their housing, and so we want to pray for them and their family, as they go through that time of transition. Moving in a normal time is not easy and to be moving in the midst of this is extremely complicated and stressful. ❤Also, we want to be in prayer for Joni Hall. Joni serves in our nursery and she has had a myriad of health concerns going on. She gets more tests on Wednesday, and so we want to pray for her a peace that passes understanding. We want to pray for the doctors and nurses that are caring for her in the midst of this.

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MONDAY UPDATEReverend Mark Johnson | June 8, 2020

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Monday Update - Continued from page 6

❤Tom Whitson sent us a prayer request for friends of his. For Richard who is fighting leukemia. And he has three friends: Dick, Bill, and Bill, who are all fighting lung cancer. We want to be in prayer for these gentlemen and for all of those who are fighting cancer. These things, we don’t hear about them any-more, but they’re continuing. There’s still people who are fighting these, all the illnesses that we had before. ❤We want to be in prayer for George as he continues to wait for the good word from the doctors, and wait for his scheduled hip surgery and just to be in the space between where he is now and where he will be in the future. ❤And also, I personally want to ask for prayers for one of my uncles. A couple of weeks ago he had a kidney transplant, which is something that we were hoping for and praying for, and now he’s back in the hospital and he’s alone in the hospital. It just makes me so mindful that in the midst of this COVID-19 stuff there are people going into hospitals for unrelated things. There are people going into hospitals for COVID-19, and they’re going in without an advocate. They’re going in without a family member. And I know that it’s a well-meaning policy, but it’s frustrating and it’s hard for the loved ones in the hospital, hard for the ones who were left out of the hospital. I imagine it’s hard for the doctors and nurses to try and do everything right for these patients, but it’s always helpful to have an extra set of eyes and ears and that’s not happening right now. And so we want to pray for all of these loved ones.

So will you just join me in a time of prayer. God, we thank you that you are God. That you are in our midst and you are right there with us, no matter how far apart we feel from anyone else. We thank you God, that you have plans for us. That you have hopes for us. That you have dreams for us. That there is a kingdom coming when all this grossness, when the fight for jus-tice will be over because all things will be just. When wars will cease. When crying will be no more. When ill-nesses will be no more. When pain and tears will be wiped away. God we look forward to the Kingdom where there is a tree that is meant for the healing of all the nations. Help us to cling to that hope, even now, and help us to work for that reality here in this place, in this moment. Because if that is the end of our story then that must be your will.

God we pray for those who have loved ones, friends, and family; hurting and sick. Friends and family that they are far apart from and haven’t seen in a while. Give us a peace that passes understanding and ways to connect that surpass even this circumstance. Thank you God for all that you’ve done and all that you’ve given us. And, if any have doubts, if any are anxious or fearful, we do just pray for peace that passes understanding to be upon them. We pray specially for children, the youngest amongst us who see the news, who absorb our stress. That you would keep them safe from this time. That you would prepare their hearts and minds to be followers of you. And, we pray for those who are unsafe right now and feel that they are completely isolated. But, some-how in the midst of this someone would reach out to them and they would find a way to communicate their need for help, and that we would find a way to help them. God we do just ask for community. For bridges to be built. For conversations to be deepened and to be had. For all voices to be heard and respected. For name calling to cease. For the ways that we injure each other to cease, so that we truly can be about building your Kingdom here, in this place. In Jesus’ most holy name we pray. Amen.

Thank you, everybody. I miss you. I love you and I look forward to seeing you as soon as I can.

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Hello from the world of Broadway kids! Since we have not been able to be together as a group, I’ve had to get creative in order to keep in touch with our children. Since everyone loves to get mail, I’ve been relying on that to stay in touch and have sent out 2 rounds of mailings with some fun little gifts in them. We’ve also had a Zoom call and we were able to see one another and catch up, which was a lot of fun!

Shannon and I have been hard at work in the Nursery while everyone has been out of the building. We have reorganized toys, disinfected everything and some other minor updates in order for the Nursery to be as clean and functional as possible for our return.

CONTACT INFORMATION11 S. First Street | Council Bluffs, IA 51503

712-322-7741

office@broadwayunitedmethodist.compastors@broadwayunitedmethodist.com

www.broadwayunitedmethodist.com

MINISTRY STAFFChildren’s Ministry- Carey Garafalo

kids@broadwayunitedmethodist.comStudent Life - Shane Coffey

studentlife@broadwayunitedmethodist.comOffice & Communications - Teresa Fletcher

Facilities Manager - Garry Milbournoffice@broadwayunitedmethodist.com

CHILDREN’S MINISTRY UPDATECarey Garafalo, Director of Children’s Ministries

Carey Garafalo and Shannon Meister use Playdoh® to explain Sundays Scripture from Exodus.