pandemic – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

Advent 1: Making Room

Jeremiah 33:14-16 Advent always gets here before I am ready for it. No matter how good my intentions, I am never quite prepared; I am surprised by the arrival of Advent, wishing time would slow down. But if the season of Advent is about making time and space to get ourselves ready, then maybe that’s as it should be. Maybe I don’t need to get ready to begin getting ready. However it may be, here we are…at this special time…Advent 2021. And like it does every year, Advent takes us as we are – where we each are personally, where we are as a congregation, where we are in the world. And where we are in the world is still kind of a hard place. We have been in this COVID season way too long for us to keep it in the forefront of our minds – and yet, even […]

Stories

Matthew 9:27-33 I have been wondering recently what we will say about our pandemic experience after it is all over. When we look back on this time, with the perspective of months or years, what will we say? What stories will we tell? I listen sometimes to Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Friar, who writes and speaks a lot about spiritual things. I heard him say that there was surprisingly little written about the great flu pandemic of 1918. The reason, he gathered, was because people were ashamed of themselves. Some people abandoned their families. Many people acted in selfishness and fear. And after it was all over, they were too ashamed to speak of it. They only wanted to forget about it. If we are honest with ourselves, each one of us can probably identify with that in some way. There have been times in our lives that we were […]

Treasure

Matthew 8:1-4,16-17 A lot of the time you can keep your health issues to yourself. You don’t have to announce them to the world if you don’t want to. You can have as much privacy as you like. But it’s different with infectious diseases. And in a time of pandemic, it’s very different. People are hyper-alert to any signs of illness in themselves or the people around them. I know. Whenever I sneeze into my mask, I can feel people giving me the side eye and inching away. It was like this, but worse, in the ancient world with leprosy. Anyone who had leprosy was shunned. Leprosy was serious business. It meant potentially disfigurement, rotting skin, and loss of limbs; something highly contagious and incurable. People believed that merely touching a leper could cause you to become infected. And so the lepers in Biblical times were banned from community life. […]

Journey to the Light, Part 4: The Impossible

Luke 1:26-38 There is a legend that says Mary was not the first young woman to whom the angel came. That, in fact, the angel Gabriel had made numerous attempts to identify a young woman who would carry the Christ child. Madeleine L’Engle imagines how these conversations might have gone. Responses to the angel might have sounded something like this: “Are you sure you mean – but I’m unworthy – I couldn’t, anyhow – I’d be afraid. No, no, it’s inconceivable, you can’t be asking me – I know it’s a great honor but wouldn’t it upset them all, both our families? They’re very proper, you see. Do I have to answer now? I don’t want to say no – it’s what every girl hopes for, even if she won’t admit it. But I can’t commit myself to anything this important without turning it over in my mind for a […]

Remembrance

Matthew 5:1-12 As we moved toward this day of remembrance, 2020, I did a little personal remembrance, looking back on this year. Where have we come from in 2020? About a year ago, in the last couple of months of 2019, I was feeling a sort of restlessness, a sense that something was burgeoning, getting ready to be born. As the world turned to a new calendar year, I felt there was light right around the corner. I remembered that way back in the beginning of this year I was very conscious of what 2020 means to us. 2020 is perfect vision. I began this year thinking about that and with the intention of making 2020 a year of seeing clearly. To me this meant a kind of spiritual clarity. I was drawn to the idea of seeing where and what God is calling us to. What is God drawing […]

We Need A Miracle

Acts 2:1-21 On the day of Pentecost the small band of disciples were hunkered down in their upper room. They were all together in one place. In one room. Everybody in that room had – not long before – been a part of the crowds who were gathered in the streets below. Not very long ago they had been a part of that community, the people who made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Jewish festivals. That’s just what they had done, in fact, for the Passover festival. About seven weeks earlier. But a lot had changed since then. Now their community was much diminished. Now their community was comprised of a group small enough to fit into this upper room. And, sadly, the people in that room viewed many of those outside their room as enemies. It was kind of a low moment for the People of the Way. They […]

Heart to Heart Talks, Part 3: Real Connection

John 9:1-41 I read a story in the news recently about a woman named Marion who has lived all her life with a severe hearing impairment. Then, in her 40’s she began losing her vision too. At first, she was devastated, but then she decided that since she was still alive, she would start dancing. And then she started teaching other visually impaired people to dance. She leads classes of blind people, like herself, where they learn to do line dances. Most of them are over the age of 60. Like their teacher, Marion, they began losing their vision later in life, so they have memories of seeing. Like Marion, they have learned to find other ways of seeing. Dancing together is one. For anyone who was born blind, like the young man in this gospel story, other ways of seeing are the norm. I wonder if that is why this young […]