We come before you now with heavy hearts full of so many emotions. We grieve the amount of people who are sick and the families who have lost loved ones. We feel powerless to help expand our hospitals to meet this crisis. We feel turmoil with the daily changes that the news brings. We feel sad for the people who are losing their jobs. We’re afraid of what might happen to us or our families. Help us, O Lord, to mentally place these burdens in a basket and lift them up to you. Help us to give them to you and trust that You will provide, You will prevail and You will be with us. How we long for You to replace these burdens with Hope and Comfort and Love. Thank You for promising You will always be with us even to the ends of the earth. We boldly claim that promise today. Help us to walk in that Light today. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
I don’t know about you, but I really like to feel in control. With all that has been developing over the last few weeks, I would imagine most of us feel like we are not in control of our own lives, much less what is happening around us. Meetings cancelled, work cancelled, school cancelled, worship online, businesses closing and on and on. Everyone has opinions about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. The news and social media might help keep us informed but they can also be overwhelming and sometimes downright detrimental for our mental health. All of this makes life feel very surreal, out of sync and definitely out of control.
What are we to do then? When our lives are suddenly flipped upside down and much truly is out of our own control. First, we have to take our responsibility to help lessen the effect of this virus quite seriously and do what is recommended by the experts to help “flatten the curve.”
I am also considering this time as a good opportunity to practice “slowing down.” I am usually one who is thinking about what is next and rushing through whatever it is I am doing to get to the next thing. I have always admired people who seem to appreciate the moment they are in and who do not rush to whatever is next. But, “being in the moment” requires me to stop forcing things to happen in my time and requires me instead, to be more open to God’s time. In Ecclesiastes it is written,
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
I hope you will consider what God is calling you to during this very unusual and uncertain time in the life of ourselves, our congregation and our world.
Prayer
Lord, there is a time for everything. These times seem particularly uncertain and frightening. Even when things seem out of control, make us aware of your presence with us and remind us that no matter what the times bring, you are Immanuel, God with Us. Amen
The advent of the coronavirus causes me to wonder again at how much of the world exists outside our human awareness. It is not only our ignorance of the lives of billions of people, animals, plants, bacterial and viral life, and the inanimate elements who and which inhabit and comprise our planet. It is ignorance of objects and forces in the universe too profound for us to grasp and too minute to be seen by the strongest electron microscopes. These unexperienced layers of life are just as real as our everyday lives, just as integrated into existence as we are. Sometimes confoundingly beautiful, sometimes fearful and threatening, each life and element is a thread woven into the fabric of the creation in which we live, a creation somehow gone wrong.
Likewise in mystery and complexity is the Spirit of God. The Spirit that sustains creation despite its brokenness pervades everything visible and unseen, everything tangible and imagined. The Spirit who moved over the face of the waters of creation and inspired the apostles at Pentecost impels life forward and invades our every experience of it: the cool, smooth surface of a slice of obsidian; the billions of molecules of hydrogen and oxygen in the morning mist; the eerie glow of a tumbling meteor; the babbling joy of a first grandchild; the anguish that flows down our cheeks when we lose the person we love most in the world. The Spirit is there in all of it–the Spirit, our ground of being, holding in safety those we have lost, holding together the weave of creation in a reality we sometimes think we glimpse, but cannot hope to understand.
On the cross, a broken and suffering Jesus breathes his last, offering up His spirit both to the Spirit in whom He trusts His all and to the hope for our broken universe in all its vastness and complexity. He offers his life and death in demonstration of the love and mercy of that same Spirit for our infected and aching, but beautiful world. And, after the cross, Jesus’ own breath is restored and he is resurrected to a new actuality—the Easter reality that cannot die, that at once participates in the layers of life we know and don’t know and the layers of a Spirit we can only guess at.
As we watch the coronavirus take its course, let’s remember that in everything the Spirit remains above us, around us, within us, and for us–for the Spirit is the sustaining gift and presence of the God who clings to us, relieving our fevered lives with hope, love, and mercy.
Romans 8:38 – 39 from Eugene Peterson’s the Message:
I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
When my knees shake and my stomach churns I find my mind repeating the more familiar phrase “nothing can separate us from the love of God we know in Christ Jesus…” As Eugene Peterson translates it “nothing can get between us and God’s love.” That gives me great comfort and hope.
Our theme this Lenten Season is “preparing the ground…” I understand that as preparing our grounding…our foundation…our core. We are preparing ourselves to respond to God’s incredible, astonishing love made known to us in Christ, made known to all creation in Christ. How do we respond? How will you respond? At our core, how will we respond?
On a visit to Haiti immediately following the earthquake we made it a habit to gather early each morning for prayer. Our Haitian friends joined us. We would be working together on accessing damage and helping our friends put their homes and lives back together. One morning I asked our driver how he found hope day after day, struggle after struggle, impossible odds following tragedy after tragedy. He looked deeply into my eyes and said, “You are here. Christ is here. We go on.” Christ Hope was brought to him because in us he saw tangible evidence that he was not separated from God’s love in Jesus Christ.
Pray with me: O God whose love knows no boundaries in all creation, help us as we journey with Christ to Jerusalem to prepare ourselves for our truth…we are Christ Love to all whom we meet…that through us – our actions, attitudes, words in Christ Love – all that might separate ourselves, others and all creation from your love melt away…help us to seize this truth…and live it…amen.
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