How Are You Using the Pause?

By now you have all heard the report from our PRBC COVID-19 Task Force. We have pressed “pause” on any activities that would allow us to be together until February 14 at the earliest. It was not a hard decision, really. Everyone on the Task Force knew it was the right thing to do. Following the recent call of state and local officials for everyone to do everything we can to bring about a healthy and safe community during this time of record high cases, we understood that we had to do our part.

The truth is even though we had eased some of those early restrictions, we still remained mostly apart. We had returned to the office but with lots of precautions and very little in person contact; youth met outside, distanced and masked; very few people attended worship; and most organizations that use our campus are still not gathering. Therefore, going back to a closed campus for a month honestly doesn’t change that much in the day to day and week to week happenings of our church and campus.

I’ve worried about the people who don’t have internet or technology to keep them connected. Generous folks have tried to help us problem-solve to keep those folks in the loop. What we’ve heard is – it’s not the content they are missing, it’s the community. Technology doesn’t always solve that problem.

I’ve worried about the people who are dependent on technology for their own jobs and their kids’ school that they are “computered out” by the time it’s time to log on to church. Those folks have tried, but it’s just not the same. They would rather just wait to reconnect in person when everyone is vaccinated.

I’ve worried about our children and our young people – what it means for them to not be together to learn and grow. I’ve worried about people falling out of habits and not picking them back up. I’ve worried about the effect of trickling back together. I think we all like to imagine a grand day when we can be in the same space, but that day will not happen on one day. Instead we will come back together in small, incremental ways instead of that big, grand reunion we are all wanting. I’ve worried about 2 years from now, and the impact of going more than one year without being in person. How will that affect growth – not just numerical growth - but in deepening of relationships?

I’ve worried about the over-importance of content of sermon becoming too much of a focus in this one-way street of church where we preach and you tune in and then go about your week with little-to-no other interaction. We didn’t go into this work to be televangelists yet that is kind of what it has become.

I’ve worried about the impact of not being able to show up for each other – to hold babies and usher people through the waters of baptism and share a communion table and gather for funerals and weddings and celebrations of our senior adults and our seniors in high school. I’ve worried that now that it is so convenient to tune in whenever and wherever that some folks have already decided this will be their main mode of connection because it’s just easier in an already hectic world. I’ve worried that everyone so desires to go back to “normal” that we may miss an opportunity to let go of some things that needed to go and fail to embrace what we have learned that can open us up to creativity and vitality in new and transformative ways.

It’s an irony, then, that the very first sermon I ever preached was on Matthew 6: So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. It’s difficult to practice what one preaches!

It is a part of the human condition to be worried or concerned about things as worrisome as global pandemics. If it were not so, it wouldn’t have been featured so prominently in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It’s when our worry turns to fear that worries me the most. I am not afraid of any of the things I have listed. I trust that we are in this together and God is with us. I believe that we will emerge stronger, even if we are different. I believe we will thrive in ways that we cannot know yet. I have faith that we not only CAN do hard things, but that we WILL do hard things – and that will not happen if we stick our heads in the sand and just hope that everything will turn out okay.

When we name our worries and are honest about our concerns, we find creative solutions. I hope you are thinking about all the “what’s nexts” of your lives both personally and as a congregation. I hope you are using this time of “pause” in our collective lives to ponder how we can be more fully alive to God’s calling in our lives. I hope we can begin to imagine together what new thing might be happening among us that we help us to live out our calling in this place.

How are you using the “pause” of your life right now? May it be to seek peace and work for justice. May it be to tend to your own spirit that you might in turn be able to tend to others more fully. May it be to be more fully alive to who God is and how God is at work in you and in the world. May your “pause” help you to listen for the still, small voice of God calling you Beloved. - Amy

Grace Upon Grace

Last Sunday I preached from the first chapter of the Gospel of John. The first 18 verses of John 1 is John’s theological rendering of the birth of Jesus. No angels, no shepherds, no Magi. John presents a layered telling of the birth of Jesus the Christ. One verse caught my attention: From his fullness, we have all received, grace upon grace. (verse 16) I began to ponder – what does that even mean? It is such a lovely abstract thought, but I needed something concrete to hold on to in this new year.

Someone asked me to share what I had said, and I thought others might appreciate having it in writing. The hope is that by reading these graces upon graces, grace might be sparked in you – that you might be able to see it and hear it and recognize it when it comes your way and name it for what it is: Grace upon Grace and Gift upon Gift.

Some of these are my own – others sent to me by friends helping a friend write a sermon – which is itself Grace upon Grace. I give you this gift today – real life, lived examples of what it means to receive Grace upon Grace:

• It’s you laughing *at* me with such kindness that I can begin to laugh at myself too.

• It’s the patience in your eyes that says, “Tell me all about it. I have all the time in the world.”

• It’s friendships that pick right up after a long absence, and you don’t miss a beat – as if you’ve never been apart.

• It’s a wedding vow of a second marriage that begins something like “You don’t often get second chances – especially with the big things in life – but you have offered me a second chance at love and a commitment to love.”

• It’s listening to a story you’ve heard before — maybe more than once — because the teller needs to tell it again – without reminding them that they’ve told you before.

• It’s the joy in the faces of your children when they are mesmerized by fireworks or lights on the tree or when they hit that home run or get that first college acceptance or when they are licked in the face by their dog or when they jump in a puddle of mud and see their delight reflected in your own face or when they stand before God and everybody and commit their life to another and then cry through their own vows. All of those joys are contagious gifts of grace upon grace.

• It’s letting someone with less skill and experience than you perform a task because that person needs to learn it whether that be to bake a cake, preach a sermon, or drive the car.

• It’s taking enough deep breaths to get to the creativity deep within that helps you find a compromise position (instead of just giving in because it’s easier.)

• It looks like friends showing up for your father’s and granddaughter’s funeral - holding you up when you can’t do it yourself.

• It’s having a partner who thinks of your comfort/pleasure/fulfillment/enjoyment before their own so that *you* can learn to put theirs first without depleting or losing yourself.

• It’s card after card, meal after meal, text after text, prayer after prayer, meme after meme. Grace upon Grace upon Grace.

• It’s one person sending a funny meme every single day for more than two months when all you ask for is funny memes. Grace upon Grace. Gift upon Gift.

• It’s people who really get you. Understand you. And trust you enough to let you really be yourself even when yourself is not all shiny and new, but sometimes yourself is tattered and broken and sad and scared.

• It’s breathtaking moments alone when you’re in a shower or watching falling autumn leaves, or watching a family of foxes playing in a drainpipe, or watching the sun rise over the ocean or set behind a mountain peak, or experiencing the soft and profound silence as snow falls on evergreens.

• It’s not keeping tabs on who called whom last – you just call even if it’s not your turn.

• It’s a stole made out of the prayers of your people.

• It’s an angel made out of a cardboard shirt box that sits atop your Christmas tree because it was the best you could do 34 years ago when you didn’t have much money, and though you could replace it with an expensive one now, you wouldn’t dare do it because that cardboard shirt box angel means everything.

• It’s opportunities for quality education and recognizing that it is a privilege that should be used for you to do your small part to make the world a better place.

• It’s your now-grown children listening to you sob when you receive a positive COVID test. And I mean sob, and they respond with “Mom, I’m so sorry.” And they receive your tears just as you received theirs for all those years.

• It’s when a child returns the favor of being Raised Right by being the caregiver for the aging parent.

• It’s when your sorrow is my sorrow and your joy is my joy.

• Then, in the beauty of technology, in real-time, many of you helped to continue to write the sermon as you posted your own Grace upon Grace experiences in the comments of our Facebook Live broadcast. Thank you for making the sermon better by adding your voice to mine. Here’s some of what you all said:

• It’s family worshipping together from afar.

• It’s Jaime’s prayers.

• It’s having a serving, loving, giving forgiving church family.

• It’s receiving a prayer shawl after my mother’s death.

• It’s zooming with my Connection Group – sharing and smiling and loving.

• It’s always feeling welcome in this community, receiving its most fruitful benefits of love and friendship, even while not full members.

• It’s technology in the time of a pandemic that keeps us connected to family and friends and church.

• It’s being seen and loved just as you are by your faith community.

• It’s lifelong friendships that are humbling examples of grace upon grace.

• It’s having a church family.

• It’s real friendship with your adult children.

• It’s seeing your kid grow up to be a better musician than you are, but being willing to humor the old guy and still play with him.

• It’s being accepted by Park Road despite - and perhaps even because of - your endless questions and persistent doubts.

Dear Friends, let’s keep writing this sermon. Look for and name Grace upon Grace. We are going to need it in 2021. Grace and Peace,

Amy