It is hard for me to escape the fact that March will the one-year anniversary of the time that everything started shutting down due to the pandemic. In the midst of a fruitful Lenten season, all of the in-person activity of the church ground to a halt and we had to shift gears quickly. Naively, I first believed that the disruption would last but a few weeks; soon I grasped the true impact of changes.
There was much uncertainty and fear in those days. The memories of those disruptions, both professional and personal, will not be pleasant ones.
However, we come to the one-year mark in much different place. We have a better sense for how the virus works and who is most severely impacted by it. We have vaccines being distributed and between the vaccinations and those already infected we should be making progress to slowing the outbreaks of the virus. The rates of infection have decreased significantly in our part of the world, and we have targeted the return to limited in-person worship at the beginning of March.
Holy Week will be start on March 28th—Palm Sunday—and it is not certain, yet, what the mix of services will look like during Holy Week. We ask for your patience. Starting things back up will take more time than shutting things down did. We will communicate any changes in the schedule as soon as we can.
I can tell you, though, that the signs on the horizon give me optimism. A colleague once described these last eleven months as the “Lent that never ended,” but I’ve never subscribed to that point of view. Yes, the reality of cross has been our constant companion over these month (and the shadow of suffering and death has been real), but I have always looked for signs of resurrection along the way, too. The faithfulness of God’s people, the flexibility to adapt when circumstances have dictated it, and signs like the presence of a dozen cars in the parking lot to celebrate Christmas Eve on a cold December night, give me glimpses of resurrection.
Our journey to Jerusalem in this Lenten season is not one that we make alone: Jesus is always with us on the way. May that thought give us comfort and encouragement in the days ahead.
Shalom aleichem—Peace be with you.
Rev. Jim Hoppert
