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| pixabay.com Franck Barske |
By Rev. Barry Robison, Harrisburg District Superintendant
COVID Memorial Service
2021 Susquehanna Annual Conference, June 18, 2021
Well, where to start? I don’t know about my colleagues, but I always find it a challenge to know how to begin a message for a service of death and resurrection or a celebration of life observance. Often, I struggle with what the best way would be to acknowledge the loss and pain that death brought to family and friends, but also to proclaim the hope and healing that Christ’s resurrection brings.
Perhaps I make it harder on myself than it needs to be because I’ve always made it a practice to craft the service, and especially the message, in as personal a way as possible. I believe it is important for family and friends to hear something personal in the liturgy as well as the message. There’s a healing aspect to knowing that your loved one was known, personally, by others and by God. There’s real comfort in being reminded that your loved one, and their life, mattered to others, and to God.
It’s also important to hear words acknowledging the reality of death, and more so to hear the hopeful words acknowledging the reality of victory over death. A significant aspect of hearing such words fairly soon after a death is that they help strengthen and prepare us for when death will intrude into our lives again down the road. These services and messages help us to move on and begin to put our lives back together again, sooner rather than later. But where to begin a message for a service intended to acknowledge all the losses and pain we have suffered due to COVID? I mean, persons have lost their lives and families and friends have lost loved ones to the pandemic, some as much as sixteen months ago.
Churches, too, have suffered losses. Congregations have been impacted, not just by deaths of congregants caused by COVID, but also by suffering the loss of ministries, of financial security, of momentum, and the loss of the sense of family as people choose to go elsewhere or not return to in person worship. Our churches, too, need to hear words acknowledging the reality of these kinds of death in their fellowships, and even more so, perhaps, to hear the hopeful words acknowledging the reality of victory over death.
It was the third Sunday of January this year when I tuned in to an on-line service from one of our churches. The scripture lesson was about Jesus calling Andrew and Peter, John and James. That Sunday was right after perhaps the largest spike in COVID cases since the pandemic began. Maybe that’s why I heard two verses of that very familiar passage of scripture as I never heard them before: “A little farther up the shore, Jesus saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. And he called them to come, too. They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind.”
What jumped out at me that day was the phrase, “mending their nets.” Immediately my mind was drawn to the image of mending nets as an apt description of the work and effort required of us to put our lives back together as individuals, as churches, as our nation, and even as the world, as we come out of a devastating pandemic.
Interestingly, three months later I attended, in person, a worship service at the same church because I wanted to hear the guest speaker who was to preach. Lo and behold, I heard the same scripture from the same pulpit in person as I did virtually. That confirmed for me that “mending nets” was the way to start the message for this service acknowledging all of the losses and pain we have experienced because of the pandemic.
The nets of our lives, individually and congregationally, have been torn and the task of mending them is before us. COVID has torn the nets of our lives in different ways. It has affected the physical, mental and spiritual health of some people in ongoing ways. It has affected others through loss of income or employment. It has caused folks to feel isolated through the loss of relationships, both personally and congregationally. COVID has torn the nets of the ways we live life, at home, in public, and at church.
For those who fish with nets, it is inevitable that the nets will tear. One can’t escape the fact that using nets to fish causes the nets to become worn and/or broken. The more or the harder they are used, the quicker and more severe the tearing will be. That reality, though, shouldn’t discourage folks who fish from using nets. Those who use them simply need to understand and be prepared to make repairs frequently. Likewise, we shouldn’t shy away from living life and being the church simply because the nets of our lives and ministries will eventually get torn.
And so, part of a fisher’s work is spent fishing, and part spent mending. Repairing broken nets is tedious and often time-consuming work. I can’t imagine very many people look forward to or enjoy mending nets. Sometimes it may seem to those who fish that more time is spent mending than actually fishing. Whether true or not, mending nets is doing what needs to be done behind the scenes so the nets can be used again to catch fish.
All of us, as we live our lives, encounter times when the nets of our lives have been torn or broken. Relationships have ended, jobs have been lost, illness or accident have altered what we might be able to do, or not be able to do, physically. Death is certainly one of those times when the nets of life get torn, perhaps in wider or bigger ways than any other. Yes, the pandemic has torn the nets of our lives in many ways, but especially torn the nets of our hearts through the deaths of our loved ones.
For those of you who have lost loved ones over the course of this pandemic, you have been faced with the daunting task of trying to mend the nets of your life in ways that are not traditional. Services of Life and Resurrection, memorial services and funerals could not be held at all, much less in our accustomed ways. Family, friends and loved ones could not visit before death came, or gather afterwards for comfort, in the familiar ways that are so helpful. Mending the nets of our lives following a death has been difficult in these days because we have been denied the opportunity to hear words acknowledging the reality of death, and more so to hear the hopeful words acknowledging the reality of victory over death.
But the good news is that our hearts can be mended. God is in the mending business, you know. God can, will and does help us mend all the nets of life, but especially our hearts. May you hear in verses 14 and 15 of Psalm 90 the affect the mending work of God can have for you: “O Lord, satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace evil years with good.” Sounds like those words were written for today, doesn’t it?
One universal effect I’ve heard the pandemic has had on people, on pastors, and on parishioners alike is weariness and the sense of feeling burdened. Folks are just plain tired … tired of coping with and fighting over restrictions, tired of trying to hold life and ministry together now, while looking for creative ways to adapt ministries to a world that has changed, and tired of trying to mend the nets of our lives.
As we’re finding out, it takes time and effort to mend. Usually, it is slow and meticulous work that requires patience and steadfastness. The same will be true of mending the tears and brokenness in our human families, especially since some our grief work has been delayed. And it will also be true for our church families. So may we hear anew and take hope from Jesus’ invitation as recorded in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Applying the image of mending nets to our churches would mean that much work needs to be done behind the scenes to care for what has become torn or broken in our churches by this pandemic, so that the church can be best able to cast nets again to bring people to Christ, and hopefully into the church, as well. Hear that again: much work needs to be done behind the scenes to care for what has become torn or broken in our churches by this pandemic, so that the church can be best able to cast nets again to bring people to Christ, and hopefully into the church, as well.
Mending what is torn or broken is not glamorous work, whether on a lakeshore or in a zoom meeting room. It is not the work that usually gets recognized, acclaimed or even thanked. It can be hard and frustrating. But just as God is at work to mend the nets of our human hearts and lives, God will be present to help congregations mend the nets of their lives and ministries, no matter how great the tear or how big the holes.
The word “mending” implies an intention to keep using. One doesn’t mend something unless one intends to keep and use the item, as opposed to throwing it away and getting something new or different. But hear this: The thing mended, fixed or repaired, might not be able to do everything it used to do or in the way it was used to do it. Nevertheless, it still might have value and could still be useful.
An example: I inherited an electric trimmer for shrubbery. That means I have to use an extension cord to operate the thing. To reach all of the bushes at one parsonage, I needed a hundred-foot extension cord. One time as I was trimming, I went to flip the cord over the top of bush while still operating the trimmer. The cord caught on the bush and I “trimmed” off the last 12-18 inches of the cord. Now, being cheap—I mean being frugal and a wise steward— instead of throwing 98-½ or 99 feet of extension cord away and buying a new one, I asked a friend to “mend” the extension cord by splicing the plug back on to the remaining cord. I could then use the perfectly good cord, just not being able to reach quite as far.
Our churches and church families will not be the same; ministries, events, worship services will be different in part because some members of the family have chosen not to be there. Ministries, events and worship services will be different because many have discovered, and are now using, new and different ways to conduct those ministries, and by them are reaching new and different people. Because churches and church families will not be and are not the same even now, we can choose to look at the situation entirely negatively and try to go back to the old ways, like the disciples later wanted to do, or we can look at it as something new with all the potential and possibilities of new things.
Remember, God consistently proclaims throughout Scripture that God is a God of the new. It seems that we are poised today to experience Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. Already God has been at work through the people and pastors of our congregations to put nee flesh onto dry bones and to breathe new life into our churches and our ministries.
For instance, several of our churches opened their facilities to community children and their families as part of the Community Classroom Initiative. The goal of the Initiative is to provide a safe space where local elementary students could continue their on-line education when staying at home and/or going to school weren’t options. What a wonderful, new way for God’s people to connect with local people like never before.
As great as that is on its own, in at least one case God did even more. A family with elementary aged children utilized a church’s Community Classroom. The parents later came to the pastor and asked to have their children, and themselves, baptized and to perform their marriage. Beyond merely the ministry of the congregation, a net was mended for that family personally. What’s more, that connection between a church and neighbors the congregation never knew before is an example of how we can fulfill our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world even in a pandemic. As the pastor observed, “...sometimes it takes stressful and overwhelming circumstances to provide the catalyst to change in positive and uplifting ways.” Said another way, “Sometimes nets need to be torn so they can be mended in new and perhaps stronger ways.”
But you know, there do come times when the nets can no longer be mended sufficiently to be useful or effective to catch fish. In those times, the wiser and better course is to discard those nets and replace them with something new, and perhaps something different. Andrew and Peter, John and James were called by Jesus while they were mending the nets, not after they were finished. We may feel like all we can or should do at this time is mend our nets by trying to put our lives back together the way they were. But God may very well be taking the opportunities created by the pandemic to call us from mending only to some other purpose. Remember, in Ecclesiastes 3 it says there is a time to tear and a time to sew, but also there is a time to keep and a time to throw away.
This passage from Matthew reveals to us that Christ may come along and call us away from what we are trying to mend, calling us to follow him in new directions and into new ways to fish or to live instead. Jesus did that here, at the beginning of his ministry, calling Andrew and Peter, John and James away from their fishing and their mending.
Jesus also did it at the end of his earthly ministry. You may remember that after the crucifixion, the disciples wanted to go back to their old way of life. But Jesus came again and called them away from going back to what was, to moving ahead to what could be on the other side of the resurrection. The power of the resurrection made available through the coming of the Holy Spirit would make things possible that were impossible and inconceivable before the crucifixion tore apart the nets of their lives and their three-year ministry with Christ. I believe the same can and will be true for believers and congregations that look for and respond to Christ’s coming to them today as the church rises again post-pandemic.
Covid forced change on us. The pandemic forced our churches to consider all kinds of ways, most new and different, to “mend” the ways they did worship, Bible study and Sunday School. Churches had to figure out how they could mend the ways they offered food and clothing to the needy, care for and “visit” those confined to their homes or residential facilities, reach out to their neighbors and communities, and use the buildings which were suddenly vacant and underutilized.
A couple of weeks ago my wife was looking through a file drawer and came across a bunch of folders. She put them aside for me to look through, to see if there were things that we still wanted or needed to keep. In one folder, I found a message I wrote in 1999 to a congregation I was leaving for a new appointment. I had forgotten all about it, but it seems in God’s timing that God brought those words back to my attention again that I might share some of those words with you in closing today.
I wrote: There [was] a commercial by the Hershey’s Corporation that [said]: “Change Is Bad.” (The commercial referred to changing formulas or recipes of food products.) Don’t you believe it. Maybe for Hershey’s and Classic Coke change is bad, but for everything else change is essential. A wiser person than an advertising executive observed that “Living things that do not change, die.”
Think about it. Snakes shed their skin; if they didn’t, they would remain forever small or strangle in their too tightly fitting skin. Hermit crabs leave one shell to find a bigger one; if they didn’t, the pressure of growing against their cramped quarters would eventually kill them. We enjoy beautiful butterflies because caterpillars changed. Gorgeous flowers blossom because seeds first died.
Change is good! Human beings change all the time. No mother can give birth without her body going through tremendous changes. Although there are some days when we may long to return to the simpler times of childhood, most of the time we adults are glad that we endured the growing pains of childhood and the upheavals of adolescence. Without those changes, we would remain children.
The whole point of this [reflection] is to say that change in the church is good, too. No church wants to be known as a dead church. (Refer to Revelation 3:1-6 for Jesus’ rather strongly negative opinion of dead churches.) But to remain alive, churches must change. In order to grow, churches must change.
Like the hermit crab, the church I served changed in the past by moving from a building too small to a larger one. How painful that must have been to those folks who were baptized, married and had family buried out of that first sanctuary. But the work of the church flourished with bigger space, and the congregation enjoyed the benefits of the change undertaken so many years ago.
Like mothers, the church I served had undergone tremendous changes to give birth to many new, different and exciting ministries. Sometimes, like caterpillars, ministries had to be suspended for a time only to emerge in wonderfully new ways. Sound like today, folks? Other times, long-forgotten seeds planted by church members finally grew and sprouted into effective ministries in God’s time. Most of us have no idea of the struggles involved, the tears shed, the agonies endured by those who have gone before us. What we do know, is that [the church] and its individual members are stronger disciples for Christ because those changes took place.
And so today, as important as mending nets can be, I encourage you to resist the temptation to think that all you can or should do at this time is mend your nets by trying to put your lives back together the way they were. God may be calling all of us away from those efforts to some other purpose.
