"To Him be glory forever": February 2021

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

YouTube Activism

Yesterday I started taking a free course on how to use YouTube for churches. The man teaching the course already has worship music ministry that our church has benefited from and so when I saw he created a course to help people who the pandemic has thrust into YouTube I thought “I’m in!” To this point our congregations YouTube channel has been pretty low-key and is only as sophisticated as I can figure out on my own. Learning how to do it a bit better, and for free, appeals to me.

So I took the first lesson, Upload Details. For the most part it dealt with things that I figured out when we got started with this last March, but there was something that caught my eye in a way it hadn’t before.

When uploading a video a category can be designated for it, things like Sports, Music, Comedy, Entertainment, News & Politics and so forth. There are about twenty categories to choose from. The instructor suggested that church’s use the category of Nonprofits & Activism.

Activism…hmmm. I don’t know that I’ve ever consciously thought about being a pastor as being an activist. But…

The apostle Paul said:

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

He also wrote:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

And Jesus said:

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.

John Knox, writing to the people of England said:

For no crime is so heinous which God will not cast in the bottom of the sea, and bury in perpetual oblivion, if you with unfeigned hearts turn to the Lord your God, whom so grievously you have offended. (Knox, Works, vol. 5, p. 514)

Since these are the kinds of thoughts that frequently run through my mind and color my sermon preparation, and my blog posts, Activism is probably a good fit.

Activism for the Kingdom of God. I kind of like it!

Sunday, February 21, 2021

Everything Hasn’t Changed

This morning our congregation was able to gather for worship for the first time in eleven months. I’m starting to write this post on my break between services. Yup. First time back and two services instead of the one we had before. Because of limits as to how many people we can allow in the building, not having any way of predicting how many people would come, and not wanting to create any kind of sign-up list we are beginning by offering two services. Everyone isn’t ready yet to gather in a group and given the restrictions as to how many people we can have in the building two services seems to be our best option.

Twenty-one people came for the first service. I knew them all and some I have seen a few times over this long break. Because of the need for facemasks there were a few that I could only recognize because of whom they were with. And there was one person I did not recognize at all, because she came in separately from her family. Twenty-one people, all the same, in that I knew them before all this started, and yet also all changed in some ways over the past eleven months.

Worship was changed as well. No standing. No singing out loud. A few things taken out of our usual service, so as to reduce contact between people. Other things, such as the Lord’s Supper and collecting the offering, done differently, also to reduce direct contact. And even though I kept to my practice of going through the service by myself beforehand I messed up more than one thing once we got started.

Even with all the changes it was good to get together with God’s people at the first service, and it will be good when the next group begins to arrive in about half an hour. And that is because the God to whom we bow down in praise and worship does not change. Not ever. And not only is that for good, it is the very best good.

God tells us this himself in Malachi 3:6, which begins with the phrase:

“For I the Lord do not change.”

There are a number of ways we could dig in and understand that truth about God, the truth that He doesn’t change. The way that grabs me right now, as a preacher, preaching to a changed people in a changed time, is that I lift up to them the One who never changes. The One who has made a promise to gather a people to Himself and hold them through all things. Good times. Bad times. Times of plenty. Times of scarcity. In soft breezes and warm sunshine. Through raging thunderstorms. Whether those times happen to us literally, or metaphorically, God doesn’t change, and He never lets go of His children.

For me, this morning, it is a joy to gather with a changed people in a changed world, and to preach the good news of an unchanging God. Amen.

Sunday, February 14, 2021

Unexpected Blessing

This morning was Sunday morning, a time when I am usually at church and leading worship. Because of the pandemic and the ways that things have played out here on the reservation our congregation has not been able to gather for worship since March of last year. We are hopeful that will change soon, and it is possible that we could gather again as soon as next Sunday.

Right now we can’t gather as a large group but since last fall I have been at church during the time when we would ordinarily worship, available to individuals and small family groups for prayer and the Lord’s Supper. Some Sundays a few people may stop by. Other Sundays I spend the time reading and praying.

This morning it was a bit after noon and I was beginning to think that no one would be coming when I got a text asking if I was still there, as two sisters wanted to come by. I told them I’d be glad to see them and about 10 minutes later I was with a family group totaling six people.

They came in several vehicles and we got caught up while were waiting for everyone to arrive. To begin I led a prayer and then preached a short message from Psalm 46:1. Then we shared the Lord’s Supper and I led another prayer to close our worship. We talked a bit more as we all worked our way to the church entrance. From my point of view as a pastor it had already been a very good time to connect with this family, but it was just about to get better. One of the older adults told me that I needed to pray with her son. I spoke to him briefly and then he and I went to the front of the church, where we keep a bottle of oil on the table.

On an ordinary Sunday morning we have a part of worship devoted to prayer. We have a prayer of confession, a prayer for healing, and a congregational prayer, which is made of a number of things I work out ahead of time and where I also incorporate whatever prayer requests are made that morning.

The prayer for healing was something that was already in place before we arrived here in 2013. Theologically it is grounded in James 5:14, where James writes:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him in the name of the Lord.

Each Sunday I make an invitation. In the 6 ½ years we were here before the pandemic I think there were only 2-3 Sundays where no one came forward. There is a lot going on in people’s lives here that hurts and needs the healing touch of the Lord. Illness. Grief. Familial trauma. All sorts of things that hurt, adn often hurt very deeply. I never ask what may be the reason any one comes forward. My role is to make an invitation on behalf of the Lord and to lift His people up to Him. The answers to the prayers, and the timing of those answers, is all in His hands. I make the invitation, people come forward, we gather in a circle, I bless everyone by name, using the oil on the table, and then pray for them.

And so this morning the young man and I went up to the table and I got the oil to bless him and as I did so everyone else came up to join us. It occurs to me as I write this post that our action this morning was a putting into practice of the main point of my sermon this morning. I won’t add and explanation of that, for fear of making this post any longer than it needs to be. Here is the link to the sermon, Galatians 5:26-6:5, Sharing The Load.

The events of this morning were an unexpected, and delightful, blessing for me as a pastor, and also, I pray, for the family the Lord brought together for worship. This morning wasn’t quite what we would call normal, but it was the closest I’ve been in almost a year, and I praise God for that too.

Monday, February 8, 2021

Even Now

It’s been a long haul. As I write this it has been eleven months since the pandemic and all of its effects came to us on the reservation. When we gathered that Sunday in March we already knew that changes were coming and that we wouldn’t have worship the next few weeks. But we had no idea exactly what those changes would be, what effects would come with them, and how long it would all last.

Lock down. Quarantine. Social distancing. Face mask. Hand sanitizer. Zoom. Temperature checks. YouTube worship. Curfew. Online schooling. Food distribution. FaceTime. Events postponed, and then cancelled.

These are among the things that have been a part of our everyday life for nearly a year. We long to go back to normal, although by now we know that whatever the new normal is that it won’t quite be the way things were before.

As Christians what we do know is that what we see is only part of the story. Unseen and unchanging is the truth that the Lord sits on His throne and will not be moved. The truth that He holds all things in His hands and will never let a single one of His children go. The truth that He works all things according to His purposes. The truth that for His children all things work for good.

That last one is often a real challenge as we live day-by-day. How can this much disruption to our lives be for good? Friends and family have become ill and died through the pandemic. How can that be for good?

We want answers, but all we seem to get are more questions. Hard questions.

My current Bible reading has included both Genesis and Job. In each of those books there are complicated stories around hardship and suffering. There are people, Joseph and Job, who love God deeply and that love doesn’t change even when it seems as if their lives are falling apart. Both men come to see that the work of God in their struggles and suffering was for a purpose that was beyond their ability to understand at the time it was happening.

I don’t know for certain but I think that that we will find our experience to be similar. The pandemic is not what we want and as we have lived through it to this point things have rarely gone as we would have arranged them. A vaccine has been developed and is becoming more available and yet we still have restrictions on our lives, and we don’t know how or when they will be removed.

In the presence of all the changes the pandemic has brought, difficulties that we just as easily could have done without, God has been working in us, as His children, shaping us for His purposes. This is what happens in the stories of Joseph and Job. God does powerful work in and through them, but in both cases it does not become clear to them until they are on the other side of their hardships.

In a similar way it may be a long time until we see or understand the good things of God that have been going on in the pandemic. I suspect that some of those things won’t become clear to us until after our days here on earth are over and we are with the Lord Jesus in heaven.

God is good. God is faithful. His love never changes and there is never a moment when He is not with His children. Even now.