March Rector’s Message
Lent is a season of clearing and assessment and slowing down to hear and feel and see the Jesus who goes through the desert with us, who meets us in our pain and sin, who bears the brunt of our lostness. It is a dedicated time of imitating the love, service, and vulnerability of Jesus in his life and death. Some of us follow traditional devotional practices such as refraining from fats or sugars and the like, and making time for prayer and study. Others use it as a time to return to their journey of discipleship in a meaningful way. It invites us to feel our busyness, selfishness, fears and refusals to follow God, and to break open ourselves into community and our need for redemption. Whatever you choose – if you are reading this – choose to enter Lent fully as much as you can.
It was in the early moments of Lent two years ago that we had to suddenly shut down and shift into the desert time of this pandemic, to begin to become the community we are still becoming. Being a practicing faithful Christian is a relationship. One of love, patience, candor and not forgetting or minimizing our significance. The well-worn safe choices and demands of the era have asked flexibility and adaptation, and also have given us all the chance to do our part. Some of us have been frustrated and overwhelmed and chosen to care but not embrace our true commitment, and in so doing have found the relationship in a bit of a desert, a radio silence. We still love, but it is harder and more confused. In the best practices of discipleship we are collaborators, partners who do the mutual work of talent and task, and even the demands that may not delight us but we ‘do it anyways’. We do what we have to do with clear eyes and curious hearts and obedient spirits – we have nowhere else to go but to Jesus, to follow him through the difficult and the joy. We are not in the same place we were two Lent’s ago, but we have also lost some of the habits of the relationship – y’all and me. We will begin again, we will continue to walk with Jesus, with the marking of ashes, and then we will keep going.
We will start softening and entering new patterns of fellowship and hybrid learning as March begins. I trust that all of you are doing all you can to care for one another. Our nave and Mussleman and even the Deppich room have reasonable circulation and are well cleaned regularly. Starting in March, masks will be encouraged, however they will be optional for vaccinated persons (on the honor system) at meetings and classes of persons age 5 and over, and indoor worship, where there is not singing. Therefore our 10:15am Sunday service will continue with masks, however the 8 am will be optional. Singing is vital to the spirituality and prayer of many, however it is also still not recommended to do unmasked in close proximity indoors. I am grateful for your peaceful cooperation through every twist and turn.