Dear Caldwell,
Don’t forget about the Preacher’s Porch, Zoom-style tonight at 7 p.m.
The church grounds seem so empty without you, without the life that animates these old rooms and hallways.
Rick Rogers and I have been coming in – and keeping a safe distance – to keep things going, check the mail, meet service providers and vendors and do the business of the church that requires our presence. The staff meets via Zoom and our agenda of ways to do ministry is as full as ever.
We know you are there and we are touching base with as many people as we can cover. We do not doubt that we are still the body of Christ and that you are doing everything you can to look in on each other, serve our neighbors and keep God’s word nearby as a guide and a spirit.
Still, it feels sometimes like life together is disassembled. The separation between us reminds us all of how much we value seeing each other … and even Zoom doesn’t put the body of Christ back together again quite like when we are together in person. The mysterious force that is the Holy Spirit still connects us but its invisibility makes us liable to forget its power.
God showed the prophet Ezekiel a similar vision. God took Ezekiel out to a vast field of dry, lifeless bones. Whatever life those bones had known, once bound by muscle and sinew and active in the world, was gone. It must have been a depressing sight.
The Lord asked Ezekiel a timeless question: “Can these bones live?”
As we travel from Sunday to Sunday this week, we keep close by the question Gail asked Sunday in relation to Jesus healing the blind man with mud and spittle. Are we in the midst of a messy, muddy miracle that might lead us to new sight, new faith, new understanding?
WHAT was she thinking? It would take an equally audacious question to make those bones live and dance again. In these foreboding days, when the isolation and uncertainty get to us, we might even question whether our disassembled community and our sometimes disarticulated faith in God can ever be reconnected and reconstructed as it was before.
God has something up God’s sleeve, though. I’ve learned to never bet against our Lord.
Friends, reach for the faith that we are, as Gail so boldly suggested, in the midst of something that will make us stronger. The bones of life as we knew it, however disconnected and scattered they may seem, will dance again. And Christ is beside us until that day.
You’re all invited to talk about this tonight as Rev. Justin Martin hosts the Preacher’s Porch online at 7 p.m. via Zoom. (Gail and I will be in a session meeting.) Scriptures for pre-reading are Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Romans 8:6-11. What wondrous assurance they provide.
In Christ,
John