What have we sown/sewn?
Ancient church mothers and fathers often greeted one another with the phrase, “Give me a word.” This greeting led to the sharing of insights and wisdom. Today we continue this tradition with this monthly column.
For the July UMConnection newspaper, the Revs. Mandy Sayers and Daryl Williams were asked to write on the words “Sewn/Sown” for their monthly column, “Well Said.” Thoughts on the police shooting of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling found their way into their writing. We wanted to share their essays with you early in light of these tragic deaths. The paper will be published July 22. (Editor’s note: both columns were written before the tragic shootings in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday, July 8.)
By Rev. Mandy Sayers
Pastor, Covenant UMC, Gaithersburg
I saw an interview with President Jimmy Carter where he talked about growing up on a farm in Plains, Ga., where all his friends and playmates were African American. He said when he was about 14, he remembered coming in from the fields with his two best friends and when they came to the pasture gate, the two boys stopped to let Carter go first.
He said at the time, he thought they did it for a joke, that perhaps they’d laid a trip wire or something that they’d then laugh about. He realized later that these boys had been told by their parents something like, “I know you and Jimmy are friends, but now that
Carter said he was amazed and sad about this line
As the news fills again with horrifying videos of black men being slain by police officers under the most egregious of circumstances, I am thinking of that peanut farm and those country boys, one of whom would grow up to be President, but who are all three equal in the sight of God.
Farm folks learn how to prepare their fields for harvest and how to sow seeds in such a way to allow them to grow. They invest in the potential of the seed and take time to nurture it, even before it gets large enough to do anything impressive at all.
As children “learn what they live,” a seed, at least most of the time, sprouts as it is sown. The right moisture, the right soil, the right patient tending, will lead to a good sprout, a healthy plant, a good harvest.
While those boys were out in the fields, in my imagination, there was other holy work going on. Perhaps a mother or a grandmother worked inside, stitching patches onto britches or sewing quilt pieces together. In that work, she didn’t ask the patches or the pieces how they felt about the whole thing.
She worked with a sharp eye and a practiced hand to mend what was broken and to make scraps and pieces into one strong seam, or a warm covering for someone’s bed at night. She took that which was broken and made it whole, that which was separated and made it one.
Our God is a masterful, joyful, grace-filled sower, and our God is a practiced and wise and strong sewer, too. In Christ, we are called to
We owe it to all our children to
In that place, says the prophet Micah, “They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.
By Rev. Daryl Williams
Pastor, St. Paul UMC, Oxon Hill
Why? It is a one-word question that has become an all too common refrain.
I have a three-year-old nephew and no matter what you say to him, his response is “why?” The sky is blue. Why?
On Monday, we were celebrating Independence Day in our great nation. We ate, we celebrated, we watched fireworks and
Why was there going to be another family that would have an empty seat at dinner? Why were two free citizens who had just celebrated independence and freedom shot and killed while exercising the very freedom that was being celebrated?
In July 1776, we as a nation declared our independence with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” yet today I am stuck asking “why?”
Could it be that when we were
Something was sown and is growing in our great republic and it is our problem.
It is not
It is not the problem of those
Our nation is sewn together. Like every American flag that stitches together 50 stars and 13 stripes, we as a people are sewn together. No matter what we have sown in the past, we are now sewn together with a common future. We the people, all the people, are sewn together and it will be we the people, sewn together, that must begin to sow now the seeds of a better, brighter future for all of us. We the people must stand up to injustice, speak loudly and clearly when we see wrong, and declare that we are one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. We must do this to repent of the things that were sown into our land. We must do this to continue to be sewn together. We must do this so that the next generation will not be faced with the same “whys” that we face today.