You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.
Mark 5:22-24
Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.
Words of Grace For Today
God rarely delivers us from our trials. Most often God delivers us in our trials.
Jonah tried to hide from God, to no avail. Neither can we hide from God. Jonah was tested severely, as we are, too. In the deep, the heart of the seas, the flood over our heads, God’s waves pass over us.
When we face our own demise we see life more clearly for what it is. When we face the demise of our children, we ought to see life more clearly for what it is. Sometimes though anxiety makes us act as if we were just plain stupid. Anxiety explains a lot of inexplicable behaviour, even during normal times.
Jairus, a leader at the synagogue, faces the death of his daughter. He comes and pleads for Jesus to have mercy and come and heal his daughter, so that she may live.
That should be an account that tears at every parent’s heart. My child is being ripped from life here with me … and what can I do? Jairus has heard of Jesus and goes to beg, to humble himself before Jesus, to beg for his daughter’s life from a man he knows can save her.
That’s faith.
That’s faith that can only be given by God!
That’s faith that brings life to those who have it and those near them.
Jairus’ faith brings Jesus to save his daughter’s life, and she does live.
Beneath the waves of Covid isolation, loneliness, shortages, fear of illness and death (our own and our loved ones’ … and even our enemies’) we gasp for breath,
We gasp … and humbly pray that God will deliver us and our loved ones, heal us all, and bring us all, even our enemies, back to live full lives, filled with gratitude and complete joy!
Still we gasp for air. Where are we caught so dark and deep, that we find little air?
Anxiety.
So we pray, free us from all fear, and make us into the people that can heal others with a word.
God’s Great Creation Teaches Us to Prosper and Know Complete Joy
Deuteronomy 30:9
The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors.
John 15:10-11
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
Words of Grace For Today
To prosper. That is what is not happening for so many people the world over. The economies of most nations is at a near standstill, as essentials only are made, distributed, for sale and purchased.
So much that the world thrived on was not necessities, but the benefits of a very advanced global economy. Yet I have not met nor heard of a person who has truly prospered, who did so without doing on the backs of many other people who could not prosper.
To prosper seems to be equivalent to being able to get away with terrible crimes and sins against other humans, all in order to get ahead.
This is not at all what God would have us do or be in this marvellous creation.
Jesus comes to show us an exactly mutually exclusive way of being in creation; self sacrifice so that others may live well. Prospering at others expense is out of the question. The only kind of prospering is when one moves forward through ones days choosing goals and actions so that others may live and live well.
This is a quite foreign concept for many caught in the ‘logic’ of global capitalism, built as it is solidly on greed and making gains at others expense, accumulating power in wealth and using it to continually succeed in getting more money from others getting less money, endlessly.
Jesus had not yet seen global capitalism, but the previous generations had certainly seen themselves either among the conquering Romans or those the Romans conquered and ruled, to the Romans’ advantage. In spite of many wishes that Jesus conquer the Roman occupiers, Jesus instead offers to us that our joy be as his joy is in doing God’s will, and that our joy be complete.
To prosper, and to have our joy complete, all coming to us as we abide in Jesus’ love, so that God’s love will abide in us.
All this is gift; God chooses and acts. We receive and benefit. We live in God’s love. God is in love with us. And we in turn are in love with all creation and all God’s creatures.
Since time immemorial, God has called faithful people to retreat from the demands of normal life, and ask why and how one lives as one does.
This is now the time for us all.
Cancel that world tour vacation. Cancel that entertainment holiday. Cancel that weekend of expensive travel, motor sports, or casual sports. (OK, we’ve been required to do so anyway.)
God calls us to take this time and ask: how does God want us to abide in God’s love and have our joy complete? How does God want us to prosper … now during Covid 19, and after isolation is not needed for everyone’s health.
This is how we prosper: we love and give sacrificially of ourselves to others, as Christ did for us … on his cross.
Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake; do not dishonour your glorious throne; remember and do not break your covenant with us.
1 Corinthians 1:9
God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Words of Grace For Today
Jeremiah pleads with God not to break the covenant God made with their ancestor, Abraham. God alone made the covenant. It was not a bi-lateral agreement. It was not tit-for-tat. It was not a contract with the members agreeing on the exchange of things of value.
God made the covenant, simply because God choose to make the covenant. Thereafter, God returns numerous times to restate the promises. In addition to Abraham and his family and descendants being made, by God’s act alone, into the people of God, God makes promises: God will give the wandering Arameans land flowing with milk and honey. God will give Abraham and Sarah descendants as numerous as the stars.
God makes good on God’s promises. God makes good on more than that.
God comes in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth, God’s own son on earth, to live, heal, teach, suffer, and die … to pay for what you and I and all our ancestors and their descendants (i.e. all people) have done against God and the goodness of creation.
The story continues. Death does not win out, because God raises Jesus back to life.
God does this not because we deserve it, but because God so chooses.
God also chooses you and me to join in the fellowship of Jesus, the body of Christ on earth.
We may turn from God.
We may suffer as a result of sins.
We may face challenges we may not know we can even survive, like Covid 19.
God remains trustworthy. God remains a Rock for us to rely on. God remains with us!
This is the ongoing story of God. God remains with us, even when we no longer deserve the great blessings God has given us.
All good is to God’s glory. God’s glory is not our brokenness, doch God’s will to heal us.
May we be healed of all the ills that we face because of isolation, because of loss of loved ones, because of the illness we face, which may indeed bring us to death’s door.
On this and the far side of that door, God stands with us. God is worthy of our trust.
Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
Hebrews 10:35
Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.
Words of Grace For Today
Confidence!
Wikipedia defines it as: Confidence is a state of being certain either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Confidence comes from a latin word fidere’ which means “to trust”; therefore, having a self-confidence is having trust in one’s self.
Oh, to be able to have a confidence that is not bound by one’s own self, or about one’s self. Trust in one’s self is as fleeting as the beauty of the butterfly, the wisp of smoke rising into a clear sky, or of the moment of forgetting one’s own sins.
God provides this basis for confidence. God formed us! We are God’s servants! God will not forget us!
God. Now there is a Rock from which confidence can rise to hold us no matter what assails us!
No matter what we face, life or death, riches or poverty (and riches are so much more a threat to us than poverty every could be!), and kindness of truth or the cruelty of lies … no matter what we face God is our Rock. God made us who we are, claimed us, redeemed us, and equipped us as saints in this broken world.
This is confidence that cannot be broken. It is con– (with) fidere (trust) that prevails, even in the face of death, even death on the cross of Good Friday which is defeated in Christ rising in the early light of Easter morning.
Let us remember, and pray that God will hold us mindful of, the price paid for our holiness, the miracle that frees us from sin, and the reward that God gives us every day. We live in God’s blessings, no matter what.
We can say out of the confidence of faith along with Julian of Norwich who wrote and said (as the devastation of the Black Plague raged on the other side of her hermit-cell’s window – 30% to 60% of Europe died within 4 years):
I passed by you again and looked on you; you were at the age for love. I spread the edge of my cloak over you, and covered your nakedness: I pledged myself to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine.
Galatians 3:26
For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
Words of Grace For Today
Everywhere one hears the words of love, of romantic love that turns one’s world right-side-up, that sets the fears of the night to rest, that provides balm to one’s ills, and brightens the future with brilliant light.
God uses these experiences and images to speak through the prophet to describe how God claims us. When we were at the age of love! When we were but infants we were already at the age of love poured out on us by God, so God claims us. We were robed in white, marked with the cross, and blessed for each day and each challenge …
including the many challenges we face these days!
By faith God claims us through Jesus Christ. The faith that brings an infant to the baptismal font is not the infant’s faith. The faith that brings us as infants to be claimed by God is our parents’ faith … and our godparent’s faith … and the person ordained to baptize us’ faith … and the people who gather’s faith. All this faith is in each instance not earned or acquired. It is given by God.
There is no challenge that can defeat the faith that God creates in us.
Play the music of your faith, the music that rings through all of creation, the music that inspires the soul and heals the body and mind.
In this music experience the love that captures us and sets us free in a world made right with us in it!
Be courageous, calm and kind. We are in this together. Share the love that makes life precious!
God is with us, even when we think we are alone, and if God is with us, then the saints of all the generations walk with us as well. Their love surrounds us no matter what we face.
Our lives are to mirror God’s, in our thought, words, and actions.
Daniel 6:24
The king gave a command, and those who had accused Daniel were brought and thrown into the den of lions—they, their children, and their wives. Before they reached the bottom of the den the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces.
1 Corinthians 16:13
Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.
Words of Grace For Today
The king gives a command, which decimates Daniel’s enemies who were bent on killing him. They and all their families face the death they had set Daniel to suffer.
I saw this sign in a furniture store, among the kitsch hanging about:
Karma, I have a list of people you seem to have missed.
No matter our enemies, our faith given to us inspires us to love even our enemies. Revenge or Karma’s actions, or what goes around comes around are not what we wish for those who would destroy us, even when they do their best from or through seats of the highest powers, the richest businesses, the most influential families, and not even from or through the force of armed police. We forgive, except when these actions go unrestrained, unnamed, unnoticed (except by their innocent victims). Then, ordained as a select few of us are, we must name those sins as bound, and leave them to God’s judgment. We trust that the Light of Christ will shine on their evil deeds. We treat them as those outside God’s people, with empathy and care, even when they deserve none of it.
This is no easy task.
It is also no easy task to forgive those who blatantly breach the health orders. Their foolishness puts themselves and so many of us, at terrible risk of coming down with Covid 19, which will lead to the death of those most vulnerable. The fools will likely live on to continue to threaten others again.
Still we pray: God helps us Keep alert, stand firm in our faith, be courageous, and be strong.
God’s Eternal Word has Broken into This That We Know.
Genesis 18:19
For I have chosen him [Abraham], that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what the Lord has promised him.
Romans 6:22
Now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.
Words of Grace For Today
Wikipedia provides that ‘Sanctification is the act or process of acquiring sanctity, of being made or becoming holy.’
We believe firmly that only God can make us holy. We cannot act to become, or enter a process of becoming holy. Sanctification is a gift given at Baptism. Thereafter one chooses in each minute/choice to act out of being holy, or not; and truth is we all act out of both all the time, simultaneously.
As generations rise and pass, we may well charge the successive generations to ‘keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.’ This is Abraham acting then, but it is ever since God acting in the lives of the successive generations, one generation, one person at a time, to inspire them to act out righteousness and justice. God and any human who lives, eyes even a bit open, knows there are plenty of people with lots of power, influence and money who, in each generation (also ours), have no inkling for righteousness and true justice. It is all self interest, the rest of humanity be damned. Which really is the condemnation of themselves in eternity.
Given the gift of sanctification we areholy! We have the ability to be holy in every moment. In these choices, compromised as they may be by our still being sinners, we not only have an end in eternal life, we have the blessings of eternal life already today, every day!
As Covid 19 health concerns and orders foist so many new limits on our lives, new challenges, and new frustrations. Humour provides a view to this. My 88 year old Mother, living alone 10 miles from town provided these:
Who would have thought that when the time changed we would go from standard time to twilight zone time, where: I need to practice social distancing from the refrigerator. I am so excited! I am so excited. It’s time to take out the garbage. What should I wear? This month’s biggest decision was where to go for Easter! the living room or the bed room.
Simple Daylight Savings Time does not look that terrible anymore.
God’s holy people know God’s time is eternal and already it breaks in every day into our mundane lives, making each minute remarkable!
For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.
Mark 16:2-4
And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.
Words of Grace For Today
Christ is Risen! [Do you know the response?]
The dark hours of Jesus’ crucifixion and our continual sacrifice of others is passed. The void of yesterday is passed. The tomb is discovered empty by Mary and/or Peter.
God is not dead. God does not end Jesus’ story with his death, nor ours. Our stories continue in the stories of all the saints.
The Holy Spirit equips us to be ‘little Christs’ to one another, and sinners though we remain we can find our way to do the work of Christ as the saints God transforms us to be.
Jesus rescues us.
Jesus rescues us from our sins.
Jesus rescues us from our sins and the dark fog that lays over our future days.
Jesus rescues us.
We live in the Kingdom of God.
Every day we can learn and teach others to see the Light of Christ.
Every day we can give thanks. Death no longer has dominion over us, nor the Devil and all his works in and around us!
Every day we can respond, sharing all God has given us with those who need it so much.
Every day.
Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!
Christ is Risen! He is risen in deed!
Christ is Risen! He is risen in our deeds for others!
Do you want the Word, Jesus Christ, to reach more and more people?
Do you want to grow the body of Christ, to share the Good News with new people, to provide ministry to more people than you have before?
Most pastors and leaders of congregations would say, Yes?
But are you willing to get the things done to make that happen?
Most pastors and leaders would say yes, but …. And then not do what is necessary.
So what if Covid 19 has shut down gatherings, including worship services. Our hearts and brains still live on, right?
Why is Covid 19 not an opportunity to reach more people?
It is easier to get someone to ‘participate in’, to ‘visit’, or to ‘try out’ a church on line than in person. So why are the churches not capitalizing on that?
Yes, some are putting together online worship opportunities, so severely limited by the brick and mortar model of worship, that it’s painful to watch the results, but then worship in person has often been that, too. No wonder memberships decline. Or worse is for it all to become an entertainment hour where the real Word of God is hardly a bother.
Assets
Intentional Interim Ministry teaches (as many elsewhere, too) that the way to grow a church is to build on the church’s assets, on your own assets.
Among Trinity’s assets are it has a cathedral style building with a pipe organ, and an organist in Cherie Larson who knows how to make it ‘sing’, and other musicians who contribute at a very professional level to enliven worship with profoundly meaningful music.
Trinity also tapped someone who is a professional quality photographer and a video editor to create an entrance/prelude collage and exit/postlude collage of photos, set to music which is an excellent experience to take in on Youtube (better than actually entering the brick and mortar building!)
So far, so good!
Hymns
Then for hymns for the worship service, the music (from the hymnal?) with words and musical notes are presented on the screen while the music is professionally produced for the audio track, also a joy to experience. It is as good as if one is there in person (almost – since other congregants voices are missing – but one hardly notices that lack since it is still terrific to experience as it is done.) No two hymns are presented in the same way. Different instruments and voice-collections are used for each hymn. Nothing is merely good enough and then boringly the same. Always a variety brings out the best in the music of the hymn presented, reflecting the content of the hymn in the best possible way.
So far, getting better.
The rest of Trinity’s worship can be skipped over so as not to detract from the worship experience. But read on to how easy it would be to make all profoundly wondrous.
God’s House?
The Body of Christ, the Church is not made of Brick and Mortar or Wood
So what’s missing?
Missing are liturgy, scripture readings, sermon and prayers that reflect the Good News they are intended to be, instead of half efforts to fulfill an obligation whatever that is.
Readings and Words spoken need to sing!
Readings of the biblical texts for the day, can be read with heart, clarity and meaning that convey the content of the lessons. Why present worship without scripture, and scripture presented like it truly is God’s Word to us, in all its glory.
Liturgy can easily be presented, like the hymns, so that one can participate. Again reflecting God’s Word to us in all its glory.
A sermon ought memorably reflects the lessons of the day, the news of the day, and God’s life-giving Word meeting us in our sinful/God-made saintly lives. It is not that difficult to present a sermon in a manner that makes it as profound an experience as the entrance/prelude or the hymns. Of course a sermon ought to reflect the theology of the cross, of grace, and of hope that inspired us to become pastors in the first place.
Other worship material can also easily be presented so that people can participate (like the hymns are presented to be participated in.)
How come these other pieces of the worship are not as good as the music? It’s not because they cannot be. I’ve experienced them at Trinity to be as good, and not. And at a great number of other churches, both as tremendously good and woefully poor. What is it anyway that we fail to be inspired (inwardly animated to engage in the profound in-breaking of the divine in our life at that moment) leading worship, as Pastors and as lay people?
So what could be done?
This is not just for Trinity, but for every congregation out there that dares to ask, how can we reach and minister to and provide care for even more people, especially during this crisis?
What are your assets?
Can someone do music well for the congregation?
Can someone do photography well for the congregation?
Can someone do video editing well for the congregation?
Can you do your own great version of Trinity’s Prelude/Postlude?
Note: the photography for all the photos throughout the service cannot be just pictures; Trinity’s are professional photos taken with great care to present what is there with the best light, composition, and tone! That is not simple or easy to reduplicate. But if you want to do this well, good photography is a minimum!
Note: the music is not just any music played sort of well. It is the right music for the season, for the experience of entering worship. That is not simple or easy to reduplicate. But if you want to do this well, good music is a minimum!
What to do to make this worship profound through the whole service?
What could make the ‘talking head’ sections of worship not just better but profoundly inspiring to experience?
How about the best lighting, composition, and tone set up for the recording of the Pastor/Readers?
How about putting the Pastor – even a still photo (especially if you cannot figure out good photography while recording video of the readings)- standing at the altar, or at the lectern or in the pulpit as is appropriate?
How about not presenting the Pastor sitting?
How about not presenting the ‘talking head’ throughout the section being presented?
How about starting with the live/still Pastor/Reader photos/videos, and then on top of the continuing audio using photos or video that reflect the meaning of the audio beneath?
Do not present amateur photos or video or audio. Make it better than just good. Make it profoundly good!
Every human is a precious person, created in God’s image.
There is no human face that cannot be photographed to be engaging!
So do not present photos or videos that present any presenter (Pastor or lay) as washed out, greyed out, or old and tired.
Plain words are better than bad photos of the reader!
Same goes for voices! Remember, these voices carry the Word of God. Do not present almost dead, hard to hear, or confused voices. They ought to be professionally-played-on-a-pipe-organ music to one’s ears, heart, and soul! (Pastors: if you do not know how to do this then now is finally the opportunity to learn. Start with understanding the words and the Word they proclaim! The words ought to stir your spirit when you say them! Edit and practice saying them until they do!)
What is required to do this (much, so far)?
Equipment (computer and software) to record music.
Equipment (computer and software) to record ‘talking heads’.
A good [cell] camera, computer and software to produce the photos.
Equipment (computer and software) to edit video
A photographer.
A videographer. (these may be the same person, even one of the readers, pastors, or musicians.)
A website with Youtube posting or link capabilities.
A Youtube account.
Musicians, Pastor, Readers,
The Holy Spirit – is already ready to inspire everyone!
The Online Worship Results
So the worship experience on the church’s website is as terrific as it can be, worth participating in, something anyone would be proud to provide the link to, to anyone.
It’s all good enough to go viral and (not be an embarrassment to anyone, rather it would) make everyone proud to be part of the effort!
Now What? ‘Shoe Leather’ is Required
Now What!?
Now it’s the same as a mission church: share the good news.
Distribute hard copy invitations to be distributed (carefully protected as VIRUS CLEAN – state on the papers what precautions are taken to ensure the papers are CLEAN!)
Distribute them to members at home (lots of driving, but get it done, at least once!) Think about distributing already consecrated elements at the same time, in quantity to last a few months for all bound to the limits of home.
Give members multiple copies of the invite and encourage them to make more copies or ask for more if they need them.
Ask them to share the invitations with everyone they know, and anyone who is lonely! That’s a whole lot of people now!
In the neighbourhood around the church, hit the pavement with many persons working alone, putting the invitations in mailboxes -careful to be virus clean!
Why now?!
Because we can!
Because it’s God’s Word!
Because people are more in need of some contact, and open to responding to invitations online and have time to respond!
Because people are hurting, and hurting people are the people the church (historically, if not your church) cares about, and cares for!
Because it is why we live and breathe!
Because the hard work is rent for the air we breathe!
Do you want your congregation to grow, or it’s ministry to reach more people!?
Answer with your actions.
Chop Chop
Chop Chop, there’s work to be done!
Comments are welcome back to
shm AT prwebs DOT
Rev. Tim Lofstrom
Who am I? I know whose I am and who I am, but maybe you do not. I am:
Photographer, writer, blogger, and erstwhile Euphonium player and student of music.
B.A. summa cum laude from Concordia with CREDO honors, M.Div. from Yale, one year scholarship at Justus Liebig Universität, and 16 years parish experience spread over 4 decades, spouse to a parish pastor for over 3 decades.
Also commercial pilot; stay at home father; instructor at community colleges for computers; bookkeeping, photography; MCSE (NT4), ran a computer business for 8 years; and built a house with my own hands after retiring in my 40’s as a pastor in order to pull my pension as seed money for a home for my family.
Now: homeless, my reputation ruined thorough gaslighting even as I did laudably also for children, still creating photos, writing, and celebrating the Eucharist to remember who I am in the face of who people lie to say I am other.
Dark Days, Foggy Days and Minds: These are not the End!
Psalms 112:1
Praise the Lord! Happy are those who fear the Lord, who greatly delight in his commandments.
1 Peter 2:24-25
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
Words of Grace For Today
Happiness is elusive. It can be superficially faked or a product of will-ful ignorance. Set out to gain true happiness and it cannot be found, nor held onto. Even in the worst of times, true happiness can overwhelm us. Most often it sits on one side or the other of the border between reality and wish. It has taken me most of my many decades of life to realize that we can choose to embrace happiness as it sits on or so close to that border. We can at least be ready to invite it to accompany us through our days.
Jesus commands us to love one another. Doing so can only give us great delight and happiness, for we then fulfill the very purpose for which God created us.
Our sins darken our days, casting long shadows endlessly across our futures. Our sins cover our single steps forward in a soup of dense fog, so that we lose our way, and ourselves. We are lost like stupid sheep.
God does not abandon us even on our darkest days. On the torture instrument of a cross, Jesus hung, crucified in agony and died; so that the price for our sins would be paid, and we could see again, so the fog of our sins would be lifted, so that we could choose also this day to do what God created us to do!
It is a dark day, Good Friday is. Out of sheer darkness God makes the light of Christ bright to all of us; the darker our sins, the more obvious Jesus’ light, love and forgiveness that gives us life free of sin. In this darkness, see the shadow of the cross. Orient your life by precisely that with all the hope of happiness afforded you these days. Share then the slightest glimmer of happiness, the light of Christ that gives us life free of sin. People thirst for exactly this, especially now.
