Sunday, October 4, 2020
Dear St Luke Community,
Let me get right to the point. I am hoping you’ll all have a part in this week’s sermon.
Hear me out.
On Monday I attended Rodef Shalom's online Yom Kippur worship. At one point they showed a video of different members answering a question. I don’t remember the question verbatim, but it went something like this: “What have you learned or how has your life changed in ways that you’d like to hold on to when we ‘return to normal?’” Return to normal is in quotation marks because in truth, we can’t come out of this COVID experience without being changed by it. And some of the ways we’ve experienced this change have been for the good.
(Keep reading, assignment will become clearer at the end.)
In this Sunday’s scripture, God gives God’s people the commandments (Exodus 20: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20) The first four commandments are about how to live in relationship with God, and the last six are about how to live in relationship with one another. They are all about relationship and they are the ways we’re to live in covenant with God.
So what about how we’re to live with God and one another when we ‘“return to normal?” God is always creating something new out of the old, life out of death and doing a newthing.
How is this experience changing the way you live in relationship? And if you were to make a commandment of your own to yourself, how could you make it as a promise to God as a way to live in deeper relationship with God, self and others? In two or three sentences what would you say? That’s your part in this Sunday’s sermon: either by being called on or sharing in the chat box, you can name what new thing you’d like to take with you when we “return to normal.”
If I were to write one right now it might be as simple as:
I hope to continue to move more slowly and stop multi-tasking. I will spend five minutes every morning staring at the ceiling before getting out of bed instead of picking up my phone. I will never again take for granted smiling at a toddler in public and having them smile back. I will continue to Zoom with my mother and sisters till death do us part.
I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.
What will you write for Sunday? I can’t wait to hear.
See you Sunday,
Nicole