DAY 184
Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic
A series of daily reflections for people of faith
by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor
Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland
pastorrobert@paxpres.org
Week Twenty-seven Monday 14 September 2020
The Incarnate Reality
“I believe that one grace of our season of separation will be a heightened hunger for congre-gational worship, an underscoring of how gathering together for prayer and being present to and with one another, which we have often taken for granted, is a deep expression of the incarnate reality of the Christian life.” From an article on worship in a current Christian magazine
After a full four months of no shared worship experience, the longest I have ever gone without such, I found myself experiencing an unexplainable sense of anticipation as I walked into our sanctuary for our first ‘live’ Sunday morning worship service, an awareness that was muted by the name cards on seats socially distanced, indicating only 20% of our usual attendance would be there. There was a palpable feeling of warmth as people began to enter, as we listened to the prelude, as we shared in the Call to Worship. Then came the sadness that we were advised by the state health department not to sing so as not to project virus droplets should we be asymptomatic carriers, but some of us sang quietly into our masks as the worship team sang.
When people speak of ‘getting back to normal’ they are referencing an illusive past that can never be re-created as it was, for we will never be able to go back to who we were before the pandemic and the lockdown. We have changed in ways subtle but very real, and our sense of the meaning and purpose of communal worship has changed as well. We must be willing to not only accept this irreversible change but embrace it as something good, a gift from God embedded in a pandemic. Never again will we be able to take communal worship for granted. Never again will we be able to take each other for granted for both the service of worship and the participants in worship are gifts to each one of us from the Triune God.
This ‘incarnate reality of the Christian life’ called communal worship is God’s gift to us during this pandemic, and even if we participate vicariously via the online service may we sense our oneness.
Reflective question: What do you miss most about communal worship?
Reflective Scripture: Psalm 122:1 – “I rejoiced with those who said to me,’ ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”
Reflective hymn: “God is Here!” – Fred Green (1903-2000)
God is here! As we your people meet to offer praise and prayer,
May we find in fuller measure what it is in Christ we share.
Lord of all, of church and kingdom, in an age of change and doubt,
Keep us faithful to the gospel; help us work your purpose out.
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