My February Grapevine Newsletter article.
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| Grapevines in the snow. |
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!
There is an old joke about pastors—“the
riskiest question you can ask your pastor is this, ‘Pastor, can you say a few
words about…. ” One thing that many, many pastors share is the absolute
joy we have listening to the sounds of our own voices. And so the humor
of the joke is that just about every pastor I know (including me) is more
likely to say 1000 words than “just a few”. The amazing thing is that the
topic does not even have to be one we particularly know a whole lot
about! Give 15 minutes of your attention on Sunday mornings to a
man* who talks about God and the scriptures, suddenly he imagines people want
to hear from him on many things anytime. But the jig was up; it had
to end. And so COVID-19 has claimed another victim—the
self-delusion that my so-thought wise, important and plentiful words were
beneficial.
I say this only because, for over a month
now, about the only words I think or say seem to be “I don’t know.” I
suppose the good thing might be that they are honest words. I
really do not know. I suppose I got lucky last month when I
predicted that the first part of 2021 was going to be a whole lot like most of
2020. Little did I know that we were headed to another worship shut
down.
If your main contact with the goings-on
of Our Saviour Lutheran Church is The Grapevine, you may not know that we have
stopped in-person worship until February 28. And really, that is the
earliest date. Council will re-evaluate at our mid-February meeting
whether we will resume on the 28th or extend it later into the
spring. And just as mysterious as infection rates, vaccination
supplies, truthfulness in media and everything else are, the goings-on at OSLC
for the Lenten season are every bit a mystery.
· Are we having Lenten
Services? I don’t know.
· What about Holy Week? I
don’t know.
· Surely something for Ash
Wednesday, right? Yeah, probably. I don’t know.
· What’s this mean for our
fellowship groups? I don’t know.
· How long are you going to go with
this list of examples,
Pastor? I don’t know.
I think you’re getting the point by
now.
Despite the seemingly negative tone of
this article, I’m not without hope. Viruses come and go.
Vaccines get distributed and they don’t. Political parties
trade power like a kindergarten trades the common cold. And, yet,
we know that Hebrews 3:18 tells us “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and
today and forever.” It’s something to really mull over in our world
today. What exactly should you take from that? I
don’t know. But I sounds awfully important for me to hear, too.
Peace in Christ,
Pastor Lance
