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!
Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.
2 Timothy 4:18
The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
You, O Lord, are our rock and salvation!
Whatever enemy attacks us, a minute virus, a devilish temptation beyond our resisting, or a deceitful person bent on destroying us by whatever means, God is our refuge. God is a fortress that protects us.
We may be infected, become ill, every ill, suffer and even die.
We may not be able to resist a temptation that rebounds on us, ruining everything about our lives, leaving us with nothing, living on the street, bereft of family, friends and hope.
We may be attacked by a person we trusted with our life, who betrays us, who spreads rumours about us in the church and our community, who lies before the Courts, who stops at nothing to run us out of this life. And the church, the community, and the Courts may not only receive the lies as if truth, but create more lies of their own in order to condemn us and bring us within a thin thread of disappearing into a grave. And the accumulated gaslighting and it’s profound costs may indeed bring us to an early grave.
Still God is our refuge, our rock and salvation. God saves us for God’s own kingdom. Timothy wrote ‘heavenly’ kingdom, but the heavenly and earthly kingdom of God is not two separate things. It is all the same.
Even today, God is with us, and the Kingdom of God is at hand!
For this Kingdom, God saves us, even if our devilish enemies steal everything from us, even the breath that we use to sing God’s praise.
For even in death, God’s glory is made known in the lives of all us God-made saints still sinners.
While we still have breath, let us not waste any opportunity we have to live as ‘little Christs’ for each other, for those in need, for the strangers we meet, and especially for our enemies.
We can live courageously, for God is our rock, our refuge, and our salvation! Nothing can separate us from the love of God that gives us life in Christ.
Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes, and shrewd in your own sight!
1 Corinthians 2:12
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.
Words of Grace For Today
There are so many who think they are powerful, wealthy, wise, and/or famous.
God puts them down as nothing more than mere wisps of grass that fade in the heat and the cold. God instead raises up those who appear weak, poverty stricken, foolish and/or infamous, by the power of the Spirit, to share the gifts God provides to us, and through us to the all people.
Psalm 1 teaches us clearly, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. Self important people (even those not so remarkably daft as one president proves over and over, assume great wisdom) are as dangerous as the power they wield. Without the foundation of wisdom that is humility before God, there is no real wisdom.
Who are we, these days of Easter, as we celebrate each day the miracle of Christ risen, death defeated, God victorious through sacrificial love, instead of through force or wealth or power that controls others?
More so, what do we rely on, when push comes to shove, when ‘the rock’ squeezes us against ‘the hard place’, when the walls start to close in on us as cabin fever strikes is many and various ways?
Do we rely on the gifts of the Spirit, or the things of this world? Do we rely on God’s Word made palpable in the Body of Christ, and its various sinner-saint members? Do we allow the Spirit to guide us how to be those sinner-saints who bring real help and hope to those in need?
Let the gifts of life flow, from God, through us, to others. We will survive only as we trust God in all things.
Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.’
2 Corinthians 6:410
As servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities… , yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Words of Grace For Today
The Covid 19 emergency measures in place in nearly every corner of the world, some tighter than elsewhere, wear on us. We are hardwired to connect with others.
My niece went to the beach in Costa Rica where she lives. The authorities arrived and ordered her to return home. She did. Another beach goer received the same ordered and dallied, to be arrested and placed in their ‘police wagon.’
In Canada we are emptying the jails for there is no real protection there should Covid 19 reach inside those walls. Cleaning solutions are most often water and toilet paper, or a rag from an old towel, if you are lucky. The regular issue of cleaning solution is controlled by the inmates and is little more than water in its effectiveness. Instead of jail, heavy fines are in place for breaching emergency orders.
Through this wilderness of working diligently to avoid a deadly microscopic enemy, how can we trust that God is with us? Our success in avoiding the deadly enemy depends less on what we ourselves do and more on what a whole host of others do! We are in this together, dependent on what the most reckless person among us does!
The real enemy though is not this tiny one that can kill us, nor the sloppy ignorance and apathy of others. The real enemy is our own fear. For fear will make us sloppy, reckless and contagious hosts carrying the tiny enemy about for days before we show signs of being infected.
Fear also knocks the life right out of us, so that even if we never come close to, or even if we survive being infected, and nearly drowning in our own body fluids filling our lungs fighting against this tiny enemy …. Fear reduces life now and after Covid 19 to something so much less than life as God intended and made us able to live.
Fear, panic, and especially irrational terror cut off our thought processes so that we no longer can carefully assess what is happening. Our responses are quick, but often more destructive than the focus of our fear or panic. Irrational terror does not wait for an object of fear to come along our paths. It creates imaginary objects of fear. The wilderness we jump down into is a dark hole which can consume us, or transform us into a devil’s dervish of destruction to others around us.
Paul’s words need to be ours: we have commended ourselves to Christ, no matter our circumstances: no matter the cause for real fear, we remain courageously faithful and loving for others. No matter our riches or our poverty, we remain thankful and generous. No matter the enemies we face, we remain joyous, for Christ gives us life that is not diminished by outward or inward events. Our lives as God-made saints remain intact, even if the universe collapses in on itself.
Surely, then, we have solid reason to be Christ’s voice, hands and feet in these times!
When Jacob saw them he said, ‘This is God’s camp!’ So he called that place Mahanaim
Matthew 28:5.7
But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’
Words of Grace For Today
Jacob saw the angels (on his way to meet his brother Esau, whom he had cheated out of both his birthright and his blessing). He calls it Mahanaim, meaning two camps, or two hosts. One host is the earthly gathering of a few, the other is the accompanying host of great multitudes of heavenly beings.
Most people today live quite well without meeting any angels. Yet again and again they play a key role in the biblical stories. On Easter the angel is the one who shares with Mary what we treasure as God’s victory over death and all evil: Jesus no longer lays dead in the tomb. He is alive and will meet them back home.
Whether we believe in angels or not, we seem to tell our stories as if …
… as if we could get away from God, and be separate from our creator.
… as if we need despair when we are alone, as if God had deserted us.
… as if God was not always accompanying us.
Everywhere is God’s camp. Everywhere is where Jesus meets us, not just at home. Though now with the Covid 19 restrictions and advice in place we stay home as much as possible, so it is a good thing Jesus is there, too!
When we feel like climbing the walls, remember there are multitudes upon multitudes of angels just on the other side of … well everything.
And even if you doubt angels exist, trust that God is with you always, holding you up when you have no more to give, or patience to take being couped up for all our safeties’ sake.
Where we each live is Mahanaim, God’s camp, God’s home, our home.
Sometimes a photo turns out just so unexpectedly more than I wanted it to, and the marvel of the light plays even deeper than my imagination,
So I want to see it, more often, and posting it to share seems a small bit of Grace.
Easter in isolation is something for us all, though I’ve been at it for a few years now.
And then, the light shines just right and plays off the moisture in the clouds and off the rolling snow.
Easter Good Byes
What have you had to leave behind?
What is wrenched so out of your life by the health orders in place, so that you are left living outside the normal routines and security of things being tomorrow like they were yesterday?
How are you re-ordering your life in a manner that makes good, wonderful, life-giving sense for you and those around you?
Know that many others could use a word of encouragement, of thanks and gratitude, and of their worth in the ever changing footing we find ourselves standing on these days.
We should be able to empathize more for those who lived during the time of the plagues, for example when the Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347, claimed an astonishing 75-200 million lives in just four years, or 30% to 60% of the population. And it came back 800 years later.
The Light of Christ does not end, die with us, or need to return. It is always here, even in the darkest night, and through all our darkest times.
Be courageous. Find Beauty each day. Know Truth always. Be grateful, gracious and generous, with yourself and with the other sinners God put in your life. God forgives them, after-all. Why can you not also?
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.
