With our routines and world upended by the Shelter in Place Order earlier this week that affects all of California, we are looking for ways to stay connected during a mandate to physically stay apart from one another. I have been blessed to spend Lent providing pulpit supply to Grace Community Church in North Fork, CA, and this is a continuation of our time together, even though we’re in different spaces.

Holy Scripture

1 Samuel 16:1-13  • Psalm 23  • Ephesians 5:8-14  • John 9:1-41

Lay Leader: Chris Williams
Our many voices keep us in community with one another during this time. If you are interested in recording a reading of next week’s scripture, please email me.

Children’s Time

Families: You are invited to download this PDF and do the activities based on Psalm 23 with your children.
Grown ups: There are some beautiful coloring pages from Illustrated Ministry based on the lectionary Psalm reading for the day, and you might find them useful in your meditation or as a stress-reliever.

Church at Prayer

You are invited to sing the following responsively, following “Lord, hear our prayer”

Oh Lord, hear my prayer,
Oh Lord, hear my prayer,
When I call, answer me.
Oh Lord, hear my prayer,
Oh Lord, hear my prayer,
Come and listen to me.

Taize Community, Music by Berthier

All are invited to email me prayer requests for next week’s prayer, or to get in touch any time during the week. We are in the midst of an unprecidented global event, and I am available as a compassionate ear if you find you need to talk through what’s going on. Members of Grace Community Church should have received an email this week with my phone number, but if you did not receive that email, please reach out to me.

Due to the public nature of worship and prayers online, prayer requests will be vague on the video recording to respect privacy and confidentiality, trusting that God knows our intention.

Sermon

Sermon Transcript

Good morning. Before we do anything this morning, I want to check in on how you’re doing. I know that’s awkward over video, but take a mental once-over with me. Feel where you might be tense, is it in your shoulders, or are you clenching your jaw? Take a deep breath and as you slowly exhale, focus on letting some of that tension go. In the coming days or weeks, try to do regular check ins to see where you’re carrying your worry and anxiety. Sometimes we hold things without even realizing it.

Inhale. Exhale.

Thank you. That was as much a reminder for myself as it was a suggestion to you, we are in strange times. All of our “normal” has been thrown to the wayside. My kids are now my coworkers and I am their underprepared teacher, the cats are wondering why we’re always in their home, I’m hiding my own personal stash of cereal in my bookcase surrounded by Biblical commentaries and books of worship so that the rest of my family won’t find it and eat my cocoa puffs, and I haven’t had a cinnamon dolce latte in a week. I imagine that each of us has a list of the things we’re getting used to in this bizarre alternate-reality-esque reality, and it’s as varied and different as we are. A friend this week shared on Facebook, “Back in February, I didn’t imagine quite everything I would be giving up for Lent this year.”

While I was preparing for this morning, I kept finding places where a sermon would have readily jumped from if we were in, I’m just gonna borrow the liturgical calendar term and call it “ordinary time.” A meditation on “the Lord looks on the heart,” for instance from our Hebrew Scripture from first samuel. There are a bazillion ways to take that, and then twist it together with the Ephesians reading, god shining light into the places, showing what we mortals just don’t see readily on our own… blend it together with the ways that no one sees the miracle for what it is in our Gospel reading because they’re so busy trying to put an agenda behind it, and then stretch that out for 15 more minutes, BOOM! Ordinary time sermon, done.

But let’s be honest, while reading this week’s Gospel, my initial thought was NO! Don’t spit! Coronavirus can hang out in the air for up to 3 hours when you do that! Don’t touch the eyes! We can’t be walking around touching faces right now!

Sometimes, it’s a bit too arduous a task to ask us to separate our own context from what we are reading. Sometimes, it’s a bit too arduous a task to ask us to maintain the same exact routines and expectations we would normally adhere to now that we are in extraordinary time. Sometimes, meditating on the Psalm is the balm we need for what the world is handing us. So please read with me the Psalm for today, Psalm 23.

23 ^1-3 God, my shepherd!
    I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
    you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
    you let me catch my breath
    and send me in the right direction.

⁴ Even when the way goes through
    Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
    when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
    makes me feel secure.

⁵ You serve me a six-course dinner
    right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
    my cup brims with blessing.

⁶ Your beauty and love chase after me
    every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
    for the rest of my life.

That reading was from The Message bible, we are so familiar with “The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” that sometimes the words get lost in trying to play a memory game. Sometimes I find myself saying “I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” in the same cadence as Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” While it’s wonderful to know something so well that we can repeat it, it doesn’t leave as much room for new discoveries.

Here we are in week four of the wilderness of Lent. We are worshipping from home, we are looking at our pantries and hoping the boxes of spaghetti and jars of marinara hold out. When we aren’t watching or reading the news, the world looks the same from our front porch. The same cool green grass which we can lay down on, the same birds and trees. The sky might even appear bluer, the next hill over might be crisper after the rain. We can do the same things around our homes we have always done. While pulling weeds in the garden, I found a rhythm that felt normal. The dogs were playing, the pig was happily eating every weed I threw over the fence for him—especially the mallow. Just an ordinary Saturday. How could this day of scattered showers and moments of sunshine be walking through Death Valley? And yet, the fact I was home on a Saturday morning instead of hiking at Sequoia—the National Parks had just closed down yesterday—was proof enough that things aren’t normal. The presence of dirt under my fingernails reminded me how dry my hands are becoming from a never-ending cycle of handwashing between every activity. When I’ve checked the news, the projections of the potential overloading of hospitals if we don’t Shelter in Place are all I’ve needed to see to know that this is a very different kind of walk through the valley of death. Rather than picturing this part of the psalm with my usual image of a looney tunes desert, the tumbleweed rolling by, a cactus in the distance, the “mmep meep” as roadrunning whooshes by, the desert we are walking through is one of physical interaction, certitude of normalcy, unknowns about invisible germs, and the ever present laundry pile that can’t be ignored by simply leaving the house. The evil to be feared is in the form of being away from the ones we love most, the involuntary agoraphobia of a run to the grocery store, the cancelled plans and the twinge of guilt that we may have not done enough early on to prevent the spread of the virus.

Psalm 23 reminds us that even amidst all of these new dimensions to our lives, we are sought after by God, we are pursued by God’s goodness, and we are given all that we need to sustain our spirits through whatever may be lurking in tomorrow’s headlines. The last line of the psalm is “and I shall dwell in the house of the lord my whole life long.” Or in Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation,  “I’m back home in the house of GOD for the rest of my life.” And that’s the kind of shelter in place we can sink into, knowing we are cared for by a gentle and vigilant shepherd. May you shelter in peace, may you shelter in grace, and may you shelter in God’s love in these days to come. Amen.

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This morning’s virtual worship was created for the wonderful folks of Grace Community Church in North Fork, CA. I am providing pulpit supply through Easter, and have completely fallen in love with this church. If you came to this via some other source and received blessing by what was presented here today I would like to ask you to consider sending a donation to Grace. Like everywhere else, churches are being hit hard by this disruption to our usual way of life. Thank you!

Checks can be mailed to:
Grace Community Church
C/O Rene Horton
P.O. Box 368
Auberry, CA 93602