I adore the repetition that the beloved community offers in trying to embody the call to love. It’s why my prayers these past few weeks have been drawn to the epistle first but it doesn’t quite reverberate with the way of the world right now.
There is too much despair in India. Too much death. Too much unknown as to how to care for the bodies and souls of these beloveds experiencing a second wave of this pandemic. We have comforted ourselves in the United States of America believing that the vaccine distribution is changing things but it is not exactly what we hoped. We have to redefine our understanding again. Herd immunity will not be the way. There will be another that will hopefully reach beyond the borders of one nation.
At times like these, we need to assume that we don’t have the answers. We don’t know the way but we are listening. We are learning what love does now.
Call to Worship Inspired by 1 John 5:1-6 and John 15:9-17 Again, we come to learn about the way of love. Again, we come together in head and in heart to discover again how this abiding love might conquer the world. We have doubts. We are uncertain even how this love abides in our own heads and hearts. We have not loved so well. Again, we come to find the way of love calling us to bear fruit.
I like the way that last line hangs and offers a completely new image that is so foreign to most of us. Fruit trees might be in our backyards and we might rejoice in the appearance of their gifts but how do we bear fruit? Could the next moment of worship be something that meditates on this question of bearing fruit? Maybe there are visuals of fruit ripening on the vine and slow, gentle questions that encourage wondering about what this means in the gospel and in our lives.
Or if that sounds like too much work, I think you could also use Let Us Love that I created with the amazing talents of Work of the People a few weeks ago. It was written for an earlier chapter in the epistle but I think it would still work well here.
I know many of you are busy planning ahead and so I hope to send out my next newsletter for the next liturgical season that starts with Pentecost and stretches all the way through the summer. I’m making the leap from TinyLetter to Substack so this is a great time to join in this potluck of ideas and possibilities for the liturgical season ahead. You can sign up here.
I offer a lotus flower today in my constant prayers for India.
That’s all I have for you, dear pastors. I am praying for you. I am praying for you, as always.
Cooking with Elsa 