'Til We Meet Again

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

February 7, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray

Lord, thank you that you are with me. Help me to trust and depend on you today. It’s easy to lean on my own understanding. Help me to sense your presence with me. Give me a stronger desire to read the Bible and to understand what you are saying to me. Show me what I need to cleanse from my heart and life today. Give me a greater desire to take quiet moments to be aware of you. Help me choose to interact with other believers and to keep your Word central in my life. Grow my faith as I trust you to bless me as I arise now into my day.

In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

Mark 1: 29-39

Jesus Heals Many

²⁹ As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. ³⁰ Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. ³¹ So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

³² That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. ³³ The whole town gathered at the door, ³⁴ and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place

³⁵ Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. ³⁶ Simon and his companions went to look for him, ³⁷ and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”

³⁸ Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” ³⁹ So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

A Message

“’Til We Meet Again”

 

This was not an easy sermon to write. I sat at my computer and spent hours staring at that blank white screen while the cursor blinked and mocked me. It wasn't a difficult sermon to write because I don't like preaching. Some of y’all are still getting to know my preacher’s heart, but preaching is one of my greatest joys in the ministry. Especially preaching to all of you.

This sermon wasn't difficult to write because I don't like reading scripture. Quite the opposite. Reading scripture is a wonderful spiritual practice for me. It's a very meaningful one for me. And it's the Living Word. I learn something new every single time I crack open the Bible and this week was absolutely no exception.

This wasn't a difficult sermon to write because I didn't want to minister to all of you. In fact, the real reason why this was such a difficult sermon to write is because I miss you guys so much.

It's February 7th, and the very first documented coronavirus case in the United States happened just over a year ago. So here we are. Nearly 13 months into the coronavirus pandemic. Something that when it first started, I naively thought, Oh, well, you know, we'll stay home for a couple of weeks. We'll socially distance and just give this enough time to sort of peter out. And then we'll just go back to normally scheduled programming and everything will be done. That's fine. It’s fine. We’re all fine.

No, everything is not just fine. And over a year of this has taught us that we're in this for the long haul. This isn't going to go away anytime soon, nearly half a million people in the United States alone have passed away because of complications of the coronavirus pandemic. Many more than that have faced hospitalizations and lingering side effects from having been exposed to COVID-19 many months ago. Still more people have had to quarantine because they were exposed to someone else who was sick or because they themselves have a health condition that renders them unable to tolerate the respiratory distress that COVID-19 might cause.

Still more of our neighbors have been impacted in huge ways. Economically the unemployment rate in the United States now is bordering the unemployment rate that we had at the beginning of the Great Depression. These are intense times.

And then once you get past that, if you’re lucky enough that neither you nor anyone close to you has gotten sick, if you don’t know anyone personally who passed, if you’ve managed to keep you’re job and this pandemic hasn’t had a huge financial impact on your life, and most things are the way they were before…there is still one huge, unavoidable loss that has taken a toll on us all. Loneliness.

Week after week, I come to this building alone, I turn on the lights, I dress in my lady preacher garb, I put my computer on top of a music stand, I turn on the camera…and I try to forget that the sanctuary is completely empty.

We have an enormous shared grief. The grief of not being able to see one another, of not being able to have big worship services. At Christmas, we had to sit around our computers and watch a prerecorded service, which it was my delight to record for you, but still not anywhere near the same as gathering together and singing silent night while holding lit candles and being near your closest family and friends.

Some of us haven't seen beloved family members in months because we don't want to risk making them sick. Some of us haven't been in a room with more than 10 people in it. We’ve given up so much: parties, concerts, weddings, graduations, festivals, and, of course, the third sacrament of the United Methodist Church—the chicken barbeque. When we do manage to see one another we need to stand very far apart and wearing masks, or we need to use Zoom and pray we have a strong enough internet connection. It’s just not at all the same as being able to sit down face to face, unmasked, while enjoying one another’s company.

When you look at this morning’s Gospel text from Mark, you quickly see why your spirit has been so bereaved after all these months of not seeing the people of God face to face—because those kinds of spontaneous encounters with people were the heart of Jesus’ ministry. This morning we see Jesus going from place to place and randomly interacting with people that just happened to be out and about. He starts at the synagogue and then goes to the house of Simon and Andrew. He meets Simon's mother-in-law, cures her of her sickness, and makes her a believer. Without taking a minute to breathe he goes out into the streets and sees one after another, after another, after another person who has been afflicted by some sort of illness and grants them his compassion so that they may be healed, believe, and have a renewed sense of life and faith. When it gets to be too much for Jesus, because he's just been around too many people today, he goes off to pray and then his disciples track him down and say, Jesus, more people want to see you.

And back he goes to the people. Our faith is so deeply rooted in these connections, in the “ties that bind” us to every other child of God under the sun. Perhaps this morning is a good time for us to remember that. And then to think about how we can reach out to one another, even during such a time as this.

A few months ago, in a different sermon, I mentioned a man who has had such an immense impact on my faith life that he’s second only to Jesus. His name was Howard Thurman. He was a theologian, a Christian mystic, and a Baptist minister. He went to the same seminary that I did. So I was blessed that because of that connection, I got to learn a whole bunch about him during that time that I got my Master of Divinity. One of his beliefs that struck me the most was his belief that there's this unbreakable connection between the self, God, and the community. Those three things can never be separated from one another. If you pursue one, you find the other two. If you're trying to become closer to God, you'll learn more about yourself as a created being. And then God will pull you into a community of people who also love the Divine.

If you're trying to reach out and get to know your friends and your neighbors and your family better, you'll learn more about yourself and they will show you who God is because they reflect God's image.

We can’t drift too far apart from one another. God always pulls us back together.

So what do we do to cope with our grief when we can’t get together for a cooked bird and a big group hug in the prayer garden? When social distancing is what we must do to protect one another, how do we keep nurturing these connections that are the backbones of our faith?

One thing that we need to do during this time is just remember how important our whole village is to our faith. During this pandemic it’s been so tempting to focus solely on our closest friends and immediate family, and we haven’t reached out to the random acquaintances we used to see all the time before—the neighbor who walks their dog at the same time as you, the barista at the local coffee shop who has memorized your “usual” order, the other parents in the school pickup line.

To that effect. I read an article this week in a newspaper called the Atlantic. It was written by a woman by the name of Amanda Mull and her title was sad. It was “The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship”. If you can get past that sad title though, she gave us some really good insight. I wanted to share just the very last paragraph that Mull wrote:

“All of the researchers I spoke with were hopeful that this extended pause would give people a deeper understanding of just how vital friendships of all types are to our well-being, and how all the people around us contribute to our lives—even if they occupy positions that the country’s culture doesn’t respect very much, such as service workers or store clerks. ‘My hope is that people will realize that there’s more people in their social networks that matter and provide some kind of value than just those few people that you spend time with, and have probably managed to keep up with during the break,’ Sandstrom said. America, even before the pandemic, was a lonely country. It doesn’t have to be. The end of our isolation could be the beginning of some beautiful friendships.”

Jesus did his most amazing work in the times that he bumped into people by chance.

What can we do to be a blessing to someone else this week, someone who isn’t part of our closest circle, but who may still be touched by our actions? What can we do to alleviate the burden that this pandemic has put on our neighbors? Can we reach outside of this tight little box that the pandemic threatens to shut us up in? Can we find ways to extend aid to our neighbors who may no longer share a pew with us on Sunday? What can we do to show someone hurting for connection that we see them, and we care? Wherever and however you do that, Jesus lives.

Amen.

I invite you to receive this benediction: Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and coming in, from this time on and forevermore. And as all the people of God we say together: Amen.