ANNOUNCEMENTS
– Please continue to tithe! We’ll need to be working with insurance to repair the porch; pay to keep the building insured; pay for me so I can feed my family; and so forth. Mail these to the church PO box 154. Thank you!
– Hey! Our Easter service prints haven’t reached everyone! Yep. I ordered photos to go with the Easter sermon. They’ll be arriving in mail boxes this week. Do you know someone who would like to receive our services via US mail? Let me know! Do you know someone who’d like to start getting them via email? Let Lori know!
– Ron has gotten us the needed lawn mowing service.
– And he’s also contacting a church master cleaning service for us before we resume services inside the church in the future.
– When will we resume services? We don’t know yet. We’re listening to the advice of Governor Dewine and the Ohio Conference of the United Church of Christ. It won’t be May 1st with Ohio’s partial re-opening. Most churches are places of diversity, including our own. We have the very young and the very old both. That means taking careful consideration on how to be sure we’re all healthy when we’re together. So we’ll wait for the advice of Dr. Amy Acton and the doctors advising specifically on church best practices to let us know.
– Did you know we have 2 Facebook groups? One is a public page where our sermons, videos, and updates are. One is a private page for prayer requests and personal updates. If you would like to connect for prayers, please reach out there, or reach out to me. The other page is named St. Michaels Members and Friends News ((https://www.facebook.com/groups/1906306319422171))
CALL TO WORSHIP
It seems strange to me to have a call to worship without a call and response back! So I’d like to invite us to worship today with a psalm. Psalms are songs from our scripture. Psalm 16 sings,
This psalm is over 2000 years old. But it still speaks to our very human hearts reaching out to our very present God.
PRAYER
I pray this psalm over us today:
Protect us, Oh God, for in you we take refuge.
We say to you, “You are our God, and outside of you, there’s nothing good.”
We are delighted with people who choose the good and to be holy. They are noble and honorable.
Those who choose other gods multiply their sorrows. Gods of money or fame. Gods of any kind but you.
We won’t participate in these other gods’ rituals. We won’t trust the gods of politics, or economy. We won’t pray to our hedge funds or our political parties.
You are who we choose. Let us be known as Christian. You are our cup of blessing. Our lot, our fate, our luck is all tied to you.
We affirm this morning the good things you’ve given us: a heritage of kindness. A pleasant community. How you bless us.
And how we now bless you! You are our source of wisdom! By day and by night, you, God, instruct us. Our waking minds rejoice with the knowledge we glean from the world you create. Our unconscious minds bring forth the wisdom the Spirit whispers in our hearts. We rejoice at the lessons of the ever living Christ in our communities.
We’re keeping you as the center of our focus. Because you are right beside us, right in the thick and thin, right in the good and awful, we shall not be moved!
God, how glad we are! How we rejoice! The only reason we are able to let our bodies rest at night is because we feel secure in you.
For you never give up on us. You won’t abandon us in hell. You won’t abide us being isolate, alone, and dead inside.
You show us the Path of Life.
In your presence there is full joy.
In your hand are eternal pleasures.
And God, we know, you take us by the hand and lead us on.
This morning, God, hear our psalm. Hear our prayer. Hear us, join us, link us heart to heart, home to home, time to time, and let this body of Christ rejoice:
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!
Alleluia!
Amen.
SERMON
I don’t know about you, but for me, I feel… almost more anxious now than I was before Easter. You see, before Easter, I knew what to expect. No in person services until “after Easter.” We had that plan. So I hyper focused just on Easter.
While many households are running out of things to do, I can say that in this household, we have less time than ever. Instead of delivering the sermon to you once, I now deliver it in some form three or four times. And instead of seeing all of you at once and passing hellos, I dial each person individually. It’s a lot more hours!
Every church is running like this at the moment. And every school, too. And many businesses if they’re working from home. So it’s easy to get lost in the work, focus on today, and let tomorrow handle itself.
Until the Sunday after Easter.
Well fiddlesticks. NOW what?
The disciples had this situation way worse than we did. Instead of just suddenly finding themselves home bound for an indefinite time, they found themselves suddenly without their leader. Suddenly without the man who was to be their king. Suddenly without all the promises they’d dreamed of for generations.
We know this is passing. Eventually all shall be well.
They do not yet know that even death cannot keep Jesus down.
We read in John 20:19-31, that, like us, the disciples were locked in their houses and scared.
Locked inside in fear. Sound familiar?
Not sure what to do. Not sure who to believe. Yep. I can relate to that.
Thomas demands to see the proof. Demands to see some results. I’d sure like to demand too!
I demand to see the research that quinine does more good than harm on those with COVID-19. I demand to see the proof that restaurants and businesses are going to give their employees masks and gloves and thermometers and it’ll be safe for us to go out again.
I’m here, locked in my house, and its rather comfortable, thank you very much.
A week has passed. Just like it has in this reading, from the first day of the resurrection of Jesus.
And I think it’s totally okay to be demanding some proof.
We’ve made some BIG claims. I’m not talking about we as in Ohio and our flattening COVID-19 curve. Nor am I talking about we as in the USA. I’m talking about we Christians.
We have claimed that out of horror, our of ashes and ruin, out of judicial abuse, out of the betrayal of our leaders, our of the sin – the awful, darkest, cruelest parts of our hearts – God can and DOES resurrect goodness.
We’ve claimed that out of death can come life. Out of evil can come goodness. Out of sin can come redemption.
We’ve claimed For “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ((Romans 8:38-39)). That God can wrestle out a blessing.
I do not believe God causes our pain and suffering. I don’t believe God brought us COVID-19 or is punishing us.
I do believe out of this chaos and death God is working alongside us, and we alongside God, to grapple the awfulness and wrest out of it a blessing. As the psalmist sings: We shall not be moved!
These claims… these claims that goodness can be rooted out of the bad like a pig finding treats in mud… these claims we make of our God are way more unbelievable than some of the claims our political and religious authorities are making.
Is it any wonder Thomas wants proof?
Goodness! I want proof!
Show me, God, where you are beating back the darkness of this current time and pulling out the goodness. Show me God where you are defeating death and its sting and bringing alleluias to lips stained with tears of sorrow and hidden by masks. Show me God, the wounds we have inflicted and the life that now defies those wounds.
Sometimes, when we demand things of God, God answers.
God rarely answers us as boldly as God does Job and Thomas. Some of us, even in this congregation, have been answered this boldly. But that is their testimony to share.
I assure you, God does answer us when we seek. As Jesus says in Matthew, (( 7:7-8)) “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
I see God answering my demands for proof.
I see God’s answer in Casey Drake. She’s a mom in Florida who is using her kids’ sidewalk chalk to draw messages of hope, joy, and humor. Ariel sits on toilet paper and sings, “Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat?” Dorothy clicks her heels, “There’s no place like home – seriously, stay home!”
Casey doesn’t have the skills we do at St. Michael’s to sew. But she has art and humor. And she uses it to help her neighbors who walk by on her sidewalk. This is some proof from God: from dust comes art. From isolation comes connection. From fear, laughter.
((https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/florida-mom-leaves-amusing-chalk-drawings-on-sidewalk/ ))
Feeling too old to get down and draw? Don’t have the skills to draw or joke or sew?
99 year old Thomas Moore, who fought in WWII, is raising money walking his 82 foot back garden one walker assisted step at a time. Lap after lap. He aims to walk it 100 times by his 100th birthday at the end of this month. People are donating money for each lap he does. So far, he’s raised $3.3 MILLION dollars in just one week for the National Health Society of England!
((https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/wwii-veteran-raises-3-million-for-nhs-fighting-covid/))
Here is God in action. A man who served his country and his world once, continues to serve.
Here is the love of Christ – that a human would choose to offer their life, their time, their energy to serve another.
Much as 17 year old Elizabeth Taylor. She is working as a grocery clerk in Tennessee in this crisis. A man came through and spent his disability check on $173 of supplies. And he was $33 short. He embarrassingly began to put the food back when the 17 year old paid for the whole bill out of her own pocket. Why?
“I just try to give back when I can,” she said with a shrug.
Here is God’s answer to our demand: hearts attuned to the Spirit of God. Hearts that see a person in need and respond. Hearts of all ages that take the awfulness around us and, perhaps with a casual shrug, work miracles.
Do you want to hear these hearts? Dial 1-877-JOY-4ALL. Children from around the nation are recording their voices telling jokes, reading stories, and talking about what they are leaning in school. ((https://www.joy4all.ca/ )) Their goal? To spread joy.
Thomas demanded an answer, and even through locked doors, through fear, Christ arrived.
Jesus told Thomas that we are blessed when we believe without proof. When we don’t see the good, and still have hope in the good, that hope and belief itself is a blessing from God. Optimism, faith, the will to keep striving for the good and God against all odds – this is a blessing. This is a gift.
Some of us have that gift naturally pouring out of us. It comes from the fount of ever living waters that the Spirit connects us to in Christ.
And some of us need proof to have that hope. So God answers – and sends the body of Christ incarnated spiritually upon earth in creation, and in our communities, to give us rainbows and flowers in sidewalk cracks, to give us disappearing lilies, and random acts of kindness. To give us family and friends and good strangers.
I waver. Sometimes, that fountain is on in me and I can pour the goodness of God in me out for others. And sometimes, my well has gone dry. And I need others to pour the goodness back into me – whether through alone time in prayer with God, in communion with God’s goodness shown in nature… or whether through community time, gathering in the name of Jesus, and witnessing kindness in action.
But God answers. Boldly and quietly. Day and night.
We are an Easter people. Alleluia is our song. We are the people of ever renewing hope. We sing praises to God. Even locked up, and in fear, we sing: alleluia.
Alleluia God – you don’t abandon us.
Alleluia God – you don’t let death have the final word.
Alleluia God – you meet us wherever we are in our faith journey.
Alleluia God – nothing can separate us from your love.
Alleluia God – Alleluia and Amen!
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 