Dear Caldwell,
As we travel from Sunday to Sunday this week, we have another chance to gather tonight on the Preachers’ Porch. This Sunday we will celebrate World Communion Sunday, a reminder that we are part of a global family of God’s children. I’m excited that member Yara Quezada, a Davidson College senior who’s thinking seminary may be in her future, is going to preach this Sunday. She’s got the gift and will preach on two New Testament passages: John 11:32-37 and Matthew 20:1-16.
That second passage may sound familiar, as I preached on it a couple of weeks ago. But one of the great wonders of God’s written word is how many ways it can shed light in the hands of different interpreters. Come to the Preachers’ Porch tonight at 7 to get to know Yara and hang out with Gail and whoever else comes for community.
A Word About How We Stay in Touch With Each Other
Several of you have asked about having access to a church directory so that you can be in contact with one another. We are in the process of creating a digital directory of church members and active friends that will be shared only with church members and active friends in the next couple of weeks.
This list is NOT to be used for solicitation or advertisement of any kind. This list is NOT to be used for communication to large swaths of the congregation. This list is NOT to be shared with anyone or any organization outside of Caldwell. This is for you to reach out personally to folks in the Caldwell community to check in with each other. Please, friends, let’s use this tool to build one another up in love, to encourage one another to hold on to God’s unchanging hand, and to remind each other of just how cherished we are.
If you would like to opt out of being included in this directory before it is shared with others, please let me or John know by October 1st. If we do not hear from you, we will assume that you are okay with being on this list.
Watch for An Important Email
Your “Safe Return” committee that is working on when – and how – we can resume “normal” life together in person is looking for your input. So, please be on the lookout for a special letter from that group and a link to a survey intended to gather opinions about how online worship is going and to get a rough sense of how Caldwell members and friends are thinking about when and how we resume in-person activities (when it is safe to do so!). We really want to hear from you!
A Devotion for A Trying Year
“The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping ….” Genesis 32:31
If, as in the Old Testament, we were to stack stones to mark our passage through the wilderness of the year 2020, what would our monument look like? If we were to name this strange “place” in our life’s journey, as Jacob did at Peniel, what name would we choose?
For surely, as with Jacob, we have wrestled here in 2020.
Out of nowhere, this pandemic leapt onto our back, changing everything about how we live and work. It disrupted all of our church norms. Pastors and their congregations have had to rethink and rebuild virtually every aspect of church life, a challenge for which none of us was trained. As long as the pandemic lingers, we must wrestle with it, adapt to it, wriggle out of its holds and not shrink from the bout.
But not just that. Our nation has wrestled, too, and us with it as people of faith. We’ve wrestled like never before with America’s original sin of racism, each in our own context. This opponent that lives within us, our systems and institutions demands a response, a reckoning, a change in our identity once and for all. As was demanded of Jacob, we must acknowledge our deceit against God and neighbor, repent of it, repair its damages and, then and only then, seek reconciliation.
This old story of Jacob wrestling all night with a mystery “man” speaks to us over and over again. The text says it is a man, but we know better. Jacob wrestled with God that night. After a lifetime of stumbling faith in God mingled with repeated deceit against humanity, Jacob had this reckoning coming.
Jacob also wrestled with himself and his identity as God’s servant leader. When the sun came up, the wrestling came to an end and Jacob was changed forever. God gave Jacob a new name, Israel, and Jacob walked with a limp afterward as a reminder that he would never get one over on the Lord.
As with Jacob, 2020 will not leave us the same. Its effects will linger. Yet, as with Jacob, we will go forward. This pandemic will leave us both humbled and reminded of what we, as the church, can overcome if we are flexible and don’t give up. With God’s help and our obedience, this reckoning with racial justice will change how we walk in all of the days to come, as it should.
On the morning after that long night, Jacob-turned-Israel walked with a limp, but Genesis 32:31 also tells us “the run rose above him.”
On the morning after this long and trying year, what shall we name this place, this year, when we have struggled so long and yet walk toward God’s face in a rising sun?
In Christ,
John