Wait, Pray Preached on May 24th, 2020 For Wollaston Congregational Church Virtual Worship Scripture: Luke 24:44-53 Some time ago you decided to follow this teacher. He was saying wonderful things, he was doing wonderful things. In his presence the hungry are fed, the sick are healed, the down trodden are lifted up. He pays attention to children and women, those who are blind or cannot hear, those who are disfigured by leprosy. He is kind and he is true. When you are near him, you feel more complete, more whole, more at home in that deep down longing kind of way, than you have ever felt before. When you are near him, you know that you can be your truest self, you can live your truest life. You, too, can be kind. You can also feed the hungry and heal the sick. You are no longer afraid to be around the dispossessed and the disfigured. He empowers you to turn toward, instead of turning away. You can do all things when you are near him. You have been following this teacher through villages, and along the rough tracks inbetween. You have become a part of the community who follow him. You have made camp together, broken bread together, talked late into the night together. These people became your family. You knew it was too good to last … and of course it didn’t. Things got weird, frightening. He took the road toward the Holy City on that Passover Festival. You all followed, descending the route into Jerusalem. You were confused when he stopped to weep. What happened next …. the memory is a blur, things happened so fast. He was taken by the authorities and crucified. Cruelly executed. Dead. You knew he was a once in a lifetime, maybe even once in the history of the universe, kind of person. It seemed impossible that his life could be snuffed out like that. And … get this, it’s true! He came back. How, why. You don’t know. But he was really back, blessing you all with peace, eating a piece of fish. Really back. He was with you all for a while. Until today … yes, it’s become clear. His time back with you all was just a blip, a brief moment of reassurance. He takes you all out to a hill. Not just any hill, of course. Everything he does, everything he says has a purpose. It’s the hill where that Passover week first began, when you all paraded down into the humming, buzzing city. That seems so long ago now, but really it’s just a few weeks. It was a different time, a more innocent time. The time before he gave you the supper ritual that will become so important to your community. A freer time when you ate and drank together, embraced and laughed together without a thought. Just over these past weeks, you have begun to feel so much older. Less innocent, less ignorant. The curtain has been pulled back. The truth of the world and it’s brokenness has been revealed. You carry yourself with more gravity. Smiles come less easily. Tears catch you unawares. This is going to be a moment, you know it. Is this the time the religious people are always talking about, especially those fringe folks who make their camp out in the wilderness? Is this the time when the kingdom of Israel will be restored to her rightful place? Is this the dawn of the golden age? No, he replies, it’s not for you to know that time. God’s timeline is beyond your comprehension. No, now is the time for you all to begin the task of becoming my church … you are going to be my body on Earth … not only in Judea, but around the whole world. You are to birth this global movement, there is no going back. There is no return to what was before. So, now go to the city. Wait and pray for further instruction, for God’s powerful Spirit to come upon you. You can’t take it in. You don’t get his meaning. It’s going to take time to process all this. And then … this part you still can’t quite get your head around … He starts to go up. Yes, up. Off the ground. There are clouds in the sky that are weirdly low, given that’s it’s such a pleasant day. He is going up into the clouds. You stand, unable to say anything, just staring. Your gaze follows him up, until all you can see are the soles of his feet. You and all the disciples are frozen, you cannot move. You just gaze up at the spot where you last saw those feet. Your heart plunges in your chest. A cry, a moan rises in your throat. What are we going to do? He is gone. They are gone. It is gone. And so there is nothing else to do but wait. So much is lost, you have to stop now and take it in. You and your fellow disciples, your beautiful communal group, have lost the one who gave you identity. This is where you stand with the other disciples. -------------------- And this where we all stand, in our nation and in our world today. Many are gone. More will be gone. We are changed by the loss, even if we did not know them. We are changed by the collective trauma of this new way of dying, surrounded by strangers in masks and protective gear. It will take us a long time to process. We know how to grieve those who are lost to war. We will observe that special holiday tomorrow: Memorial Day. And we know how to grieve those who are lost to terrorism, foreign or domestic. Community leaders, religious leaders, political leaders speak out, they offer words of comfort and communal mourning. This year we will need to learn to do something new: to grieve those who died in a pandemic. At this time almost 100,000 individuals have lost their lives in America: parents, sons, daughters, spouses, siblings, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles. On this weekend, in particular, we remember that this pandemic has taken many veterans. They returned from their wars years ago. Now they die at home or in long term care facilities. Professor and author, Micki McElya, writes “Americans have a common set of expectations and rituals for responding to national losses, whether they’re from war, terrorism, school shootings, natural disasters or assassinations. We lower flags to half-staff. We hold candlelight vigils. We leave flowers, stuffed animals and messages of sympathy at sites that have witnessed horrors. We pause for moments of silence. We speak the names of the dead. We observe funereal pageantry from sidewalks, on television and online. We build memorials.” But sadly we do not know how to grieve those who die in pandemics. Add to this lack of experience the fact that we cannot come together in person. McElya goes on “The pandemic dead have received almost [no communal grieving] and the omission is significant — even if the dying is still just beginning. Shared grief brings people together like little else. “ [1] We cannot move from this spot, gazing at what we do not know, until we can grieve and mourn. This is our community and our world right now. ------------------------------- And then there is our church … our community of faith. The first disciples gathered on the mountain, looking up, are no longer disciples of a living, present teacher. Their identity is changing. Although they don’t yet know it, the newborn church is emerging in them. We are already a church, but how is our identity changing and how do we remain true to our calling to worship, prayer, service and gathering? Would we truly be Wollaston Congregational Church if we were ushered in and out of worship, social distanced and wearing masks, without a time to gather and find out how everyone is doing? Would we truly be Wollaston Congregational, if people over 65 and with preexisting health conditions had to stay away? Would we truly be Wollaston Congregational if we could not eat and drink together, embrace and laugh, or sing together? Would we truly be Wollaston Congregational if we had to limit the ways we could invite groups into our building? As onlookers observed the sad disciples returning to Jerusalem, they may have said, “that Jesus movement is over.” As onlookers see our building, still closed today, they may say “the church is shutdown.” They are both wrong. A small group of us gathered on Wednesday evening, since last Sunday’s worship service never happened due to Zoom problems. Worship in the evening time always feels a little more tender to me, and we closed our service listening to and watching the “UK Blessing.” This video has spoken to many souls around the world. It was released on May 3rd and had gone viral by the next day. The video was created by an amazingly diverse collection of singers and choirs from Christian denominations in the UK. They sing a stirring contemporary arrangement of the blessing from the biblical book of Numbers, “May the Lord Bless You and Keep You.” The video ends with the message: “Our buildings may be closed but our church is still alive.” [2] In an interview, the worship leader Tim Hughes, who organized the video recording, shared the ways church is still alive during the UK coronavirus lockdown. He explained that the churches who participated in the recording had served a total of 400,000 meals to the hungry. And that online ministries are reaching many hungry souls. [3] Even though we are not a church of 100’s or 1,000s here in the Wollaston Congregational community, we have also fed the hungry. Several times over the past weeks we have gathered donations and put together bagged lunches for guests of Father Bill’s shelter. Each time, three or four people have made sandwiches wearing masks and observing physical distancing. We’ll be doing another 50 lunches this week. I have heard the expression, “the church is not closed. The church has been deployed…” We don’t yet know what that deployment looks like for us. For now there may be nothing to do but wait, to process what has happened, to allow ourselves to grieve. And so we wait. May all God’s people say … Amen [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/national-mourning-coronavirus/2020/05/15/b47fc670-9577-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUtll3mNj5U&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0A2WlsQSE_7Aw2WzjZXVkov6UyEibNaC-AC3RgnWXipupFctqPvl9iSf8 [3] https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/prime-minister-gives-tim-hughes-award-and-labels-uk-blessing-video-a-sensational-singing-masterpiece?fbclid=IwAR2YJVcpeYRHa8aGVNefAIrOmFdiP8jKnPtONgmWuIbBHA-ELw8REFO9bhw#.Xr2mtLIEPu4.facebook
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