Where We Left Off?

Yesterday marked the tenth Sunday since we started social distancing here on the reservation. It was the tenth Sunday in a row when I preached through a sermon that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. That method has not become my favorite thing, but at present it seems to be the best way for our congregation to make do in the current set of circumstances.

Back in the good old days, say nine weeks ago, I imagined that this would all play out something like what happened with John Calvin. Calvin began preaching in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1536 or so. He was also involved in reforms of the church there, which brought him and  William Farel into increasing conflict with the leaders of the city. The intensity of the conflict forced them to leave Geneva late in 1537. Several years later the situation in Geneva changed and late in 1541 they were invited to return. On his first Sunday back in Geneva's pulpit Calvin opened his Bible to the passage he had preached on his last Sunday there and began to preach the very next text. After a three-year absence he picked up right where he left off.

When things with the pandemic started last March I was hoping to get back into church for Sunday worship in just a few weeks, with everything about the same as it was before. As much as I still would like for that to happen, I know that it won't. Things in New Mexico are beginning to expand for churches but given that we are on the reservation we are going to defer to the preferences of the tribe's leadership as to when to decrease social distancing and return to gathered worship and other activities.

I'm beginning to think through what that might look like and seeing what the other leaders of our congregation think would be best. However it all plays out, a number of things will be different, some of them temporarily, and perhaps, some permanently.

Last week I read an essay by Stephen Charnock on the eternity of God. Charnock lays out what it means for God to be eternal, to have no beginning and no end. One thing it means to me as a pastor today, thinking about how the pandemic is changing our congregation and community, is that God has always held his children through every trial that has come their way. He has never been absent and he has never abandoned his purposes.

We might not be able to see or understand those purposes at present, but we do continue to live by faith in the Lord who created us, is working in us, and will one day bring us to his very presence. Ten weeks of interruption in the ways our congregation functions has not been something of which I am overly fond. I've adapted, but I'd rather pray and preach with a gathered congregation. But on God's timeline, ten weeks, and ten thousand years, are all the same. Whenever we gather again we won't be picking things up where we left off, but we will be joining together as children of the God who has no beginning and no end, which is something precious and infinitely better.