Yesterday we offered the second of our prerecorded video services… Palm Sunday by YouTube. Who ever could have predicted that? It has been a learning curve for me – although the words “learning curve” seems to have fallen into common usage these days and everybody is on one. Typically, I write my sermon on Saturday, after a week of cogitation. Now we are recording on Thursdays which means, like most of the rest of the population, often I have no idea what day of the week it is. To make our recording, I record in the church. I know many of my ministry colleagues are choosing to record at home but I like the comfort of the sanctuary and I think it offers a touchstone for the congregation. The Music Director, Mary Ruth, is there to press the start and stop button on the camera and then I do the same to record her as she plays the organ or piano, all the while respecting social distancing. Then, I send the recording to our Youth Leader who does magic and puts it all together and uploads it (whatever that means) so that anyone can see it.
We are a people who rely on an ancient book. We regularly read words written centuries ago. How interesting to think that those old, old stories are being told over a technology that no one could have imagined even a generation ago. But here is the good news. It is opening up the opportunity for people to worship in their homes, sitting in their lazy-boy chairs, sipping on their coffee. It is not the same, by any stretch, as going to church, but it is offering up new and interesting opportunities. Yesterday, after the service, I received messages and texts from two friends from Saskatchewan, from friends in various points in Ontario: Grimsby, Port Dover, Kingston, Port Hope, and our webmaster shared the link with her cousin in Australia so she could to check us out. I have heard from a couple of people I have not heard from in ages. This style of worship has opened up a whole new range of connectivity for people while we isolate at home. A seeming oxymoron. Several friends have told me that instead of going to church once, as they do on a ‘normal’ Sunday, they now sit in the living room and take in three or four services. While we have less church we are getting more! I too have watched services from several places in the country. It is interesting to see how others are projecting their ministry through this new style of community.
In our team Zoom meeting last week Mary Ruth mentioned that there is not one person on earth that has not been effected in someway by this virus. No one around the globe is exempt from the impact of this illness. Everyone is coping in their own way but Covid19 is here and there and everywhere. While that is a painful reality, there is a potential upside to this as well. Could this one thing that separates humanity in some way bring us together? While we all live in isolation could the virus reveal to us that we are connected through our very being as people? Could a sensitivity to others be an offshoot? An upside? Could we realize our vulnerability not as an individual but as one human being with others?
Is it possible this Holy Week that we see our separation as a bridge to being together in a new way? What a blessing that would be, arising from this virus that is here and there and everywhere, what drove us apart could bring us together.
