The video of the service which includes this message can be viewed at -
https://vimeo.com/416979449?fbclid=IwAR0J3seDBdxGKoocNsJdjRMWZjHxRzFXniH2HwdiR9MgfpuMq05whZI_gYk
Before I begin this morning’s message, I have a couple of items to which I would like to speak. The first is to say that I am grateful to be back with you this week, and to express my great appreciation to Jordan for filling in for me on short notice. Because she had such little notice, I encouraged her to use one of her previous sermons, but she did not; choosing instead to write a new one. I appreciate her taking the time to do so and for leading the worship last week. And my thanks also, as always, to David and James, for their talents that provide the music and to make it possible for us to be online with our worship services.
Last Sunday morning, as I watched the service online, it gave me a greater appreciation for the importance of continuing to meet, even if it is only online. It also reminded me of what you are missing by not being here at the church. With the exception of last Sunday, I have been here every week for church these weeks of cancellations. Last week I was able to get a small sense of what it would be like to miss being here for so many weeks, and I really missed being here.
I also want to express my appreciation for the prayers, cards, calls, and all manner of communications on the loss of my stepfather. It was a sudden and unexpected loss for my family, and everything was complicated by the times in which we are living.
The second item I want to speak to you about is to let you know about the recommendations our task force are making about reopening the church. As you probably know, the governor has stated that churches can begin meeting again on May 20th. You might also be aware that a court decision was handed down this weekend ruling as unconstitutional the ban on churches gathering together for worship, meaning churches can reopen today, if they so choose, but are to follow suggested guidelines of health professionals.
Our task force met on Thursday evening and worked out a list of recommendations. We will send these out by email in the morning, so you will have more time to read through them, to think about them, and to give us your feedback. Our church board meets tomorrow evening and they will receive these recommendations and will provide their input. Please be aware these are the first group of recommendations we are making; there will be others as we move through the coming weeks and months.
Here is the statement and the recommendations put together by our task force –
Many of you have wondered about the reopening of the church since Governor Beshear announced recently that churches could begin meeting for worship on May 20th. The church put together a task force charged with the responsibility of making recommendations related to the reopening of the church. Before I share our initial recommendations, I want to express my gratitude for the patience and good spirit which you have exhibited during these 9 weeks we have canceled church. Your patience, understanding, and generous spirit is a testimony to the wonderful congregation you are. I also ask that you continue in this spirit, as we are doing the best we can do to prepare for what will initially be a partial re-opening, and not every recommendation we make will be ideal, but they will be the best we can do under the circumstances. If I do not provide an answer to any questions you might have, it is because we do not yet have the information that we need to address those questions. As we receive more information, we will be better equipped to answer more of your questions.
In our first meeting, there were two questions we believed we needed to address before moving on to any other questions – when will the church re-openand what needs to be done in order to have us ready for reopening? To answer the first question – when will the church re-open– we are recommending that we partially re-open on Sunday, June 7th. We were already operating on the assumption that we would be out of church the entire month of May. Even though we could open earlier than June 7th, we decided that waiting until the first Sunday in June gave us adequate time to be fully prepared for the re-opening. There is much to be done before re-opening and we wanted to be fully prepared before doing so.
To answer the second question – what needs to be done in order to re-open– we are making a number of recommendations about what will and will not take place when we re-open. In making these decisions, we opted to keep things as simple as possible. Here are the recommendations –
1. We will begin with only one worship service, which will meet at 10:00 a.m., as we have become accustomed to a worship service at that time in the past 8 weeks.
2. The chairs will be set up to allow for recommended social distancing, which means we will have a seating capacity of approximately 70 people. At this time, we do not know how many people will be permitted to attend, but we expect it to be either a percentage of our regular attendance or a specific number, such as no more than 50. We understand that beginning with 2 services would allow more people to attend, but we did not feel that to be the best decision at this time. We will, however, add a second service at the earliest possible date. As we will be limited in our attendance, we will need to know in advance who will be attending. In doing so, we want to encourage people to allow those who have not been able to watch the online services to have the first opportunity to attend. We also ask that those who are in at-risk categories to consider waiting a bit longer before attending. Please understand that we do not like the idea of limiting attendance, but this is a decision that has been placed upon us; it is not one that we have made, so we have to do our best under the circumstances.
3. We ask that everyone attending the worship service wear a mask. If you do not have a mask, one will be provided for you when you enter the building. We are blessed to have some of our congregation making masks, which allows us to have them available to whoever will need one. If you use a mask from the church, keep in mind it becomes your mask and cannot be used by anyone else. When you take a mask from the church, please plan to reuse it and to clean it before returning to church.
4. We ask that anyone who has shown symptoms of illness, or who is running a temperature, to stay at home. We ask that each person monitor their own health, check their temperature, and act accordingly before attending worship.
5. When you enter the building, the doors will be opened for you. We want to minimize contact with surfaces, so the doors will be propped open and/or held open by a greeter.
6. There will be no worship programs offered until a later date. The next step in offering worship bulletins will most likely be to have them already placed in the seats, but that will not happen in the first week after re-opening.
7. We ask everyone attending to respect social distancing guidelines while entering the building, while in the worship service, and as you exit the building. After so many weeks of being canceled, we understand that people would love to offer a handshake, a hug, or another form of physical greeting. We ask, however, that you refrain from doing so. Those greetings will return at some point, but we are not yet at the point where we should be greeting in such a way.
8. Individual communion kits will be available as you enter the building, on the round glass table in the foyer. They will be placed there by one person, wearing a glove, to minimize contact. If you prefer not to use one of them, that is a decision we respect.
9. Offering will not be taken during the service. We continue to offer online giving, and you can mail your offering to the church. Upon re-opening, we will have offering boxes placed in several locations, and we will make you aware of their locations.
10. Before re-opening, the building will be cleaned and sanitized. This includes chairs, carpet, restrooms, and all surfaces in common areas.
11. Restrooms will be open, and sanitizing wipes will be available to wipe down door handles and surfaces.
12. We will be using our metal folding chairs for seating. This makes it easier to clean and sanitize the chairs. We felt that using sanitizer on the blue cloth chairs could create a lingering dampness on those chairs that could become problematic.
13. The water fountain in the foyer will not be in use, so if you want to bring a container of water with you, please feel free to do so.
14. There will be no-contact hand sanitizers placed throughout the building when we re-open.
15. We will continue to livestream on Facebook indefinitely. This was something we had begun prior to the cancellations, with the idea that we would make it a permanent addition to the ministry of our church.
16. As this time, no other activities are scheduled to begin at the church. Sunday School does continue, however, to be offered at 9:00 a.m. via Zoom. If you would like to participate, contact Dave or the church office and you will be emailed a link that will admit you to the session.
17. A congregational survey will be mailed in the coming days, seeking your input on other matters related to the re-opening of the church. Your thoughts will be much appreciated.
Again, thank you for your patience and understanding during this unprecedented time. While the world has changed much in the past two months, resulting in many adjustments, we know that things will eventually return to normal. In the meantime, we will continue to do the best we can. If you have any questions, we will do our best to answer them, but keep in mind, we are acting on information that we have at this time, and there is still a good deal of information that we do not have. We continue to hold you in our prayers, and thank you for your prayers. God bless you.
We will present these to the board on Monday evening and, if approved, will make them available to the congregation.
We will present these to the board on Monday evening and, if approved, will make them available to the congregation.
Do I have any time left for my message?
I returned to my hometown in West Virginia for my stepfather’s funeral, and driving from the funeral home to the cemetery, Tanya and I drove past some old strip mines that snaked through the mountains of my home county. Though it is impossible to see them now, because of the trees that have grown and now cover them over, I thought about the times my friends and I hiked through those old strip mines and road our bikes and motorcycles through them. On several occasions, we found piles of tombstones that were stacked in the woods, left there by the coal companies that decided to simply toss them aside rather than reporting their find and gracefully moving them, as was required. My friends and I instinctively understood the need to honor those stones, and we would stand there in silence looking at them, thinking about the lives and the family histories they represented. Seeing the memories represented by those stones, so casually tossed aside, was a harsh reality of how time erases many memories.
How do we keep memories alive, especially when it comes to remembering what really needs to be remembered?
As we continue with the theme of The Journeyfor our messages, today our message is titled Will We Remember? I chose this title, and the Scripture text, because our country is beginning to reopen – somewhat tentatively – and as we do, some see it as the end of our journey through the coronavirus pandemic. It is not the end, in my opinion. I do not say that to be discouraging, but to acknowledge what I believe to be a difficult truth – this pandemic is not going to completely end any time soon and we will most likely be living in a partial reopening for some time to come. There is an old saying – a paraphrase of an old saying – that says the light at the end of the tunnel might be an oncoming train. I’m not saying that we have a train bearing down on us, but I will say that we have to be careful about claiming victory over the pandemic before we have actually scored a victory, or that light will fade away into darkness.
I have so far in this series been in the book of Exodus. For today’s Scripture text, I am jumping ahead from the book of Exodus to that of Joshua. Our text comes from chapter 4, when the Hebrew people had completed their generation-long wandering through the wilderness. It was time to cross the Jordan River and, at long last, enter the Promised Land. After hundreds of years, God’s promise to Abraham had finally been realized by his descendants.
The people needed, however, to remember a few crucial points as they entered into the Promised Land. First, their journey was far from finished. Even though they had finally arrived at the Promised Land, there was still much to be done before they fully settled into the land. Second, they needed to remember the past and all God had done for them. So Joshua demonstrated a great deal of wisdom as he led the people to remember their long experience.
Hear of Joshua’s actions as we the words of chapter 4, verses 1-9 as I read –
1When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua,
2 “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe,
3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.”
4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe,
5 and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites,
6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’
7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”
8 So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the Lord had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down.
9 Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.
So I want to ask this morning, as it appears that we are tentatively moving towards re-openings and the possibility of moving, however cautiously and tentatively, back to normal life, what do we need to remember about the times we have experienced? What are the lessons we must pass on to those who come after us? Will we forget, or will we remember? When a vaccine is discovered, when a cure comes to market, when the world reopens, will we move on as though nothing happened? How can we make sure that we do not forget?
This morning, I will share what I think are just a few of the lessons we must remember.
1. Tell the Stories of What We Experienced.
Recently, as I stopped for a traffic light, the vehicle in front of me had a faded and torn bumper sticker. It took a few moments, but I was able to make out its message – it had a picture of the Twin Towers, the date of 9/11, and the words, Never Forget. The faded and torn condition of the bumper sticker seemed an apt metaphor of our collective memories of that day. We pledged many times that we would never forget, but over time memories grow dim and seem further and further removed. In saying this, it is not to dishonor the memory or the tragedy of what took place on that day, but to point out the difficulty we have in retaining our memories of important events. Time passes, and the passage of time eases and erases and dissipates the wounds and the difficulties of what took place, and they gradually fade into the past. New generations come along who were not present for those difficulties and tragedies, who have no memory or connection to the events, and who sometimes believe that such difficulties and tragedies will not come to them.
Not that I want to sound skeptical, or discouraging, but we do tend to be a forgetful people. We have been reminded before, in times of difficulty, that we should not forget. But we do forget. The many admonitions after 9/11, that we should not forget our sense of unity that we experienced in the days after the tragedy, have, in less than nineteen years, faded into a greater degree of division than perhaps any of us can remember in our lifetimes. How did that happen? It happens because we move on, and we tend to forget.
I like the way Joshua kept the memories of the people’s journey alive. Joshua, in his wisdom, knew the importance of a memorial that would cause successive generations to ask of the meaning of the memorial. There, I think, is the real brilliance of Joshua’s plan. He did not list names, events, or anything else. It was just a pile of rocks, which, on the surface, doesn’t seem like much of a memorial. But it caused generations to stop, to think, and to ask, what do these stone mean? And in their asking they heard the stories, and in hearing the stories, they learned the lessons. The story of God’s work would be told, from the promise to Abraham through to the crossing of the river Jordan. Every generation, then, would learn of God’s faithfulness and deliverance.
It will be our responsibility to tell the stories of what we experienced in these days, to our children and our grandchildren. It will be our responsibility to pass those stories to successive generations, so they will remember, and never forget what was learned.
2. We Must Remember Our Vulnerability.
I do not like to feel vulnerable. I really do not. I don’t like to get sick, because it makes me feel vulnerable. I like to believe I am not vulnerable, that I am beyond things such as illness and hardship. But I’m not naïve, so I know that I am vulnerable. I am vulnerable to illness, I am vulnerable to accidents, I am vulnerable to age, and to a hundred other threats that can come my way – and yours.
The Hebrew people knew of vulnerability. They were made into slaves in Egypt, where they suffered as slaves for over four centuries. When freedom came, their celebration was short-lived, as they were faced with the realities of a harsh wilderness, where they were pursued by Pharaoh and his army, and where they feared they would starve to death. Every day, it seemed, brought a new threat to their existence and a reminder of their vulnerability.
I think all of us were caught somewhat unaware of this pandemic. We heard about it on the news, as it spread through other countries, but I don’t know that we really considered it to be a threat to us. Sure, there have been warnings for years, but pandemics? That happens in other parts of the world, not here. That kind of threat comes to other continents and other countries, but not here. And then it arrived, and we seem caught off guard. Surprised. Unprepared.
How can we be so susceptible to vulnerability? We are modern, advanced, scientific people. Science will save us, won’t it? At some point. Maybe. But that is little comfort for the families of the almost 300,000 people worldwide who have lost their lives. Almost 300,000, and still counting.
When we fail to understand our vulnerability we fail to understand and appreciate the beautiful, precious, amazing gift that is life, and what a tenuous and vulnerable gift it can be. Life can, literally, change in a heartbeat. I have seen it change for people in a heartbeat, and we have all had life upended in a way that we did not believe to be possible. Lives lost, jobs lost, businesses lost, hope and dreams lost, and so much more.
No wonder, then, that James would write in his brief little letter, 13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes(James 4:13-14). James’ purpose is not to be depressing, or discouraging, but realistic, and to remind his readers – both ancient and modern – that God has given us this wonderful, beautiful, precious gift called life. Cherish it. Be grateful every moment to have it. And remember, how quickly it can change.
3. Remember God’s Deliverance.
As we have followed the journey of the Hebrew people through the wilderness, it is bookended by two great events – the Exodus from Egypt, which instituted the Passover, and the entrance into the Promised Land, the culmination of centuries of promise. Throughout their history, the people would often look back, to the times God delivered them, and they would remind one another, remember when God led us out of bondage in Egypt? Remember when God provided us with food and water in the wilderness? Remember when he led us by day and by night? Remember how he brought us into the land of promise?
It’s easy to dismiss the past. It’s tempting to say, I’m not a person of the past; I’m a person of the present and the future! After all, we can’t live in the past! But we are products of the past. We are people of history. What happened yesterday informs today. What happened a century ago informs what will happen a century from now. Joshua understood this, and he had one person from each of the twelve tribes carry a rock across the riverbed to place in a pile as not only a way of remembering, but also as a reminder that we carry the burden of responsibility for remembering. I don’t know how big those rocks were, but a rock doesn’t have to be very large to be heavy, and the weight of those rocks were a reminder of the weight of responsibility they carried to remember, and to remember the deliverance of God.
Back in the 90s I went with a group of young people to church camp. We traveled to Jefferson City, Tennessee, to Carson-Newman College. I was glad to be there that week, as Carson-Newman was a rival of the college I attended and I had played soccer against them. The guys stayed in the New Men’s dorm, which was built in the 50s. As we were unpacking, in that old dorm ironically named the New Men’s dorm, I thought,you couldn’t update the name? Towards the end of the week, as I walked into the lobby one afternoon, I noticed there was a plaque on the wall of the lobby. The plaque had obviously been there a long time, and it was mostly hidden behind a couple of dusty, artificial ficus trees. The plaque had been placed there in honor of a couple, but it did not mention what they had done to receive the honor, so I decided to ask around. I began by asking the student working at the desk in the lobby of the dorm. He did not know, didn’t seem to care, and seemed genuinely puzzled as to why I would be interested in an old plaque. I asked around campus to try and find out, but no one on that campus had any idea who the couple were or why they had been honored. I imagine there had been a nice ceremony when the plaque was presented, and they probably served punch and cookies, but over time people forgot about the couple, and had forgotten what they had done as well. We are, unfortunately, people who are prone to forget.
Though we are not yet through this pandemic, it is not too early to ask, will we forget was has taken place and the lessons we have learned? I hope not. Let us tell the succeeding generations of our experiences, let us remember our vulnerability, and let us, above all, remember God’s ultimate deliverance.
No comments:
Post a Comment