A Reflection On the Past Year

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

It was a year ago this week that the world started to shut down; or at least, that I started to notice it.

Just for grins, I looked back at my calendar, to see what I was doing a year ago this week. It feels like a million years ago, now…another lifetime.

All while the news was filled with growing stories of a coming pandemic, my calendar tells me that a year ago this week…

— We held a memorial service at Kessler Park for one of our church saints.

— I had a pastoral lunch with somebody at Veracruz Cafe and listened as they talked about health concerns.

— I attended the “UM Forward” gathering at Preston Hollow UMC. United Methodists flew in from all over the nation. We “fist bumped” rather than hugged, and then laughed nervously about it. We used hand sanitizer. Nobody wore a mask, because nobody had thought about that yet.

— I visited “Cafe Momentum” downtown and listened to the stories of the young adults who find hope, meaning, and a second chance there.

— Our Social Justice team hosted a “Food Desert” event at KPUMC with about thirty people.

— I hung out late into Sunday night, with friends from Colorado at an Irish Pub.

— I met with the Oak Cliff clergy group at a Bishop Arts counseling center, and we talked about what it was like to be in leadership in times like these.

(This was, btw, the last time I’d be in the same room with Brent McDougal…)

— We hosted Wednesday Night Live at the church for one final time. We weren’t at all sure that anybody would show up, because it was clear things were shutting down.

Turns out, our neighborhood families came one final time. We had a big crowd, even as everybody seemed slightly uneasy about being together.

And then…the calendar of events “out in the world” just…. stops.

Everything goes “virtual.” Every entry past that mentions “Zoom” or “Phone” or “Work from Home.”

The next morning I was supposed to meet with a church leader at Oak Cliff Coffee. We cancelled.

Three days later, we were rushing to put together our first “livestream only” worship, and trying to figure out how we would navigate an upcoming “virtual” Easter and Holy Week.

And now, it is a full year later. So much has happened in the intervening time that there is no possible way to name or account for it all.

But, *because* it’s been a year, many of us are looking back. Maybe you are too.

Or maybe you still find it too painful to reflect on how everything just stopped. Maybe the isolation is too great still, or you are recalling friends and family members who’ve been sick. Maybe you are still holding your breath, waiting for your dose of vaccine. 

My vaccine appointment was last Monday. Several of you had described it as a happy and joyous moment, but also twinged with sadness. I told myself I would choose to be happy.

But as I walked out of the CVS, an unbidden wave of grief and sadness came over me. Yes, I was SO relieved and happy to have the vaccine. But the memory of specific friends whose loved ones didn’t make it…of our own extended family who have died…of the separation of all of us this past year…all of that flooded back in that moment too.

My thoughts flashed to one clergy sister of mine whose Mother literally died a week before the vaccine rolled out.
“She was so close,” my friend wrote, in a heart-rending online post.

So in the midst of this indescribable JOY, a grief washed over me too. And I remembered that this is how grief always works. It comes, unbidden. And it sometimes comes even in the midst of our great joys.

Maybe this is where you are too? Maybe you’re allowing yourself to be hopeful as well? But maybe in the midst of this, there is also grief from this past year, also arising in you?

I have every faith that very soon we shall be able to gather again for in-person events at Kessler Park UMC. (We set out our “plan” last week in my message to you…)

The vaccine is giving us all hope, and the acceleration of its supply means that our social isolation may well be coming to an end. I want to be clear, as I stated last week, that “mask wearing” is very clearly still important to us as to “do no harm” to others. The science shows that vaccinated persons can still unintentionally spread the disease. So, even as we begin to gather again soon, we will wear masks.

The scripture lesson for Sunday is the very famous passage from John 3:16. And the key verse, of course, is this:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

We can sum up this verse in the following way: “The world…matters.”

God did not —during the time of Jesus, nor today— see the world as irredeemable. Our incarnationally enfleshed Messiah reminds us that every part of our world is grace and kissed by the presence of God.

Unlike some of our evangelical Christian siblings—who seem to not care whether the world “falls apart”— God’s hope is FOR THE WORLD, and also for each and every one of us within it. God does not call us to a forced-choice theology. It’s not “either” the world, “or” our personal salvation.

God is a “both/and” God, that wants to love and save the world and all those within it.

John 3:16 reminds us that the world matters to God.

This is, of course, what has made this pandemic especially hard. It’s driven us away from one another, and forced us into an isolation that is not healthy, spiritually, physically or psychologically….and is antithetical to the core beliefs of our faith.

But, as we have just said, for the first time in a year, it *does* appear as if a more hopeful time is on the horizon for “the world.”

Pastor Kay is leading a women’s book study this Lent, on the book “Gratitude.” And Diana Butler Bass has this line that connects all of this together for us:

"When it comes to gratitude, "Me" always leads to "We."  Gratitude takes us outside of ourselves where we see ourselves as part of a larger, intricate network of sustaining relationships, relationships that are mutually reciprocal.”

We will navigate back to a more “open” future soon, we also remember that gratitude helps us overcome and deal with our grief. Both powerful grief and gratitude are before us all, and we’ll have to continue to contend with them both.

Trust that our “world” is going to get more “normal” again very soon.

Trust that we are moving away from a self-enforced time of “Me” to the beautiful chaos of “We.”

Grace and Peace,

Eric Folkerth