Showing Up
Let us not neglect meeting together...
This seems like an impossible request right now as we hunker down for a less-than-climactic holiday. Meet together? Sounds risky, if not illegal! And yet this exhortation it stuck in the Bible, meant for Jewish Christians under threat of persecution as much as it is meant for us under threat of plague, lockdown notwithstanding. However, as we also seek to protect the vulnerable and obey our elected leaders, we find ourselves caught in a conundrum. How do we do both? Can we??
Our family came down with Covid over Thanksgiving, and while it was unpleasant and disruptive to say the least, we were inundated with love and support from our church community. From grocery runs to homecooked meals, from calls and texts to illustrated cards, our community met us in our isolation. Dropping off food at the door with a mask on and waving through the window is not nearly as enjoyable as gathering around a shared table for a meal and conversation, but it still allows us to “meet together” by meeting one another’s needs and dispelling the lonely gloom of these times.
Isolation is terrible. Need I mention it’s a tactic of torture? Isolation from God is also known as hell. When Jesus speaks of unity in the kingdom of his church, he is emphasizing our need for relationship, for “meeting together”. We need to keep meeting, even if the method is an alternative to the norm of going out for coffee, hosting a meal, or attending an event. As we lose momentum in our creative approaches to life with Covid, remember what the author of Hebrews wrote to his audience as they became discouraged seeing friends leave the faith and enduring opposition: Let us not neglect meeting together, as some are doing, but encourage one another. In the Message, Eugene Peterson phrases it like this: Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshipping together as some do, but spurring each other on. Thankfully we have the means by which to encourage, to meet needs, and strive toward togetherness regardless of distance.
In light of Christmas only two days away, I can’t help but think of the isolation Mary and Joseph experienced as they welcomed baby Jesus into the world. They were away from home, in a makeshift delivery room staffed by livestock, without support from family or friends. But GOD recruited shepherds to show up anyway. LORD, let me be the shepherd, summoned out of obscurity to meet Jesus. Let me be the one to quell the pangs of loneliness, just by showing up.
Catherine Grady