The Church has left the building

Daily Devotion - May 31

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) 

while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Acts 2:1-21, 38-47

We made it through the night. God is here with us now. In the darkest moments of night this week, when the voices of rage and sorrow have been drown out by the violence of evil and destruction, God was here.  In the brightest moments of the day, where collective mourning took the shape of people showing up to help each other, to protest together, to clean up neighborhoods and deliver food, to weep and serve and love and raise voices and repair what is broken, God is with us.  In all things, God is with us. We are not alone.

When something awful happens, or awful things that have been happening for a long time come to light, once again, in all their ugliness, and claim our attention, the whole world momentarily takes on a micro focus on that crisis.  

We care and we rally, and then we're whiplash shifted onto the next crisis. A dangerous, global virus fell off the radar at the horrible killing of George Floyd.  And the spotlight on the vital cries of outrage at the deep and abiding injustice and racism that needs to be rooted out of our nation, our city, ourselves, shifted to our protests being infiltrated by violent outsiders, the summoning of the national guard and institution of a curfew, and last night’s surreal preparation for street warfare.  And in the midst of all this our daily lives, with our own struggles and joys and are still unfolding.

We human beings can’t hold all these things at once.  We shift our attention to the next one thing, and our despair and exhaustion build, and so does the pressure to focus hard on the specific thing in front of us. 

But the gospel speaks to ALL OF IT - and the message doesn’t change.  

At Pentecost, the Church is born. It’s the beginning of the people whose whole identity and purpose is to remember that the world is loved by God, that we all belong to God and each other.  That is the enduring message through everything else. 

It’s a wide, wide lens that takes in all of it - tyrants rise and fall, crises come and go, continents divide, there is mass destruction and amazing rebuilding, corruption and righteousness, death and rebirth - this being human is a terrible, glorious thing. 

And throughout every moment of it, our God is so relentlessly for us, and made us to be so relentlessly for each other, that into the deepest divides, and the most horrific brokenness, the most impossible situations where no hope can be seen, God came. 

God comes.  

Jesus comes into death to bring life for all. Death does not prevail. The final word is life.  

The world belongs to God.  The world is loved by God and is being redeemed by God. That is our hope, that is our future, that is our calling, that is the gospel, that is our message.  That is the church’s message. 

Always, and now, and always especially now.

We trust this. We live this. 

Pentecost is the celebration of the Holy Spirit moving in us to cleanse and heal and renew and empower us to embody God’s love and redemption. Pentecost is the day the Church left the building, and was born into the world. 

I woke up to a post from Holy Trinity Church this Pentecost morning, that said, in part:

We had plans for another video worship service this week, but as the days unfolded it became clear that everyone's energy was needed in the community and our worship became the daily work of the congregation. 

We typically have 200-250 people worship with us on a Sunday morning, but this past week it's been somewhere closer to 10,000. Our communion became our ordinary round tables, spread out on the lawn where thousands of neighbors brought their offerings of food, water, diapers, and tools, and thousands more came to take what they needed. Our hymns became the shouts of the protestors, our healing stations became those providing medical relief, our sharing of peace became listening to the needs anyone who found their way to our sanctuary. It's not the worship we had planned, but the church's witness and work became the worship that we needed.

And here's a holy choir:
Mennonites singing at Minneapolis protest

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Here is a list of clean-up events, food drives, and places to donate.  See how you can help. 
This Facebook group: Southside for mutual aid is keeping current.

Here is a S. Mpls. coordinated list of needs that also keeps changing and remaining current.  
 

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CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Is it possible that since the moment the breath was violently forced from George Floyd’s body, we have not taken a deep breath?

Grief and horror have been followed by sorrow, anxiety, anger, fatigue, worry, tension, shame, fear, and ongoing pervasive sadness, and maybe all week we’ve been clenched tight, waiting for whatever is coming next?

I want to invite you to a moment of silence.  After each line, let whatever thoughts or feelings want to arise in you come and go. And then breathe deeply, all the way in, and all the way out, before reading the next line and sitting with that.

This is part of the story.  BREATHE.
This is not the whole story.  BREATHE.
The world belongs to God.  BREATHE.

Maybe you need to do this a few times.
Let this be your prayer.
Let God meet you here.