Keeping each other in prayer

Pastor Jack asked that we pray for each other during this time away and provided a list of current items for prayer and thanksgiving:

Dan Hicks' heart by-pass surgery went very well and he’s healing well and feeling good   and thanks everyone for their prayers.

Jeannette Krumm  called last week and was thrilled by the news that her grandson and his family returned to United States via plane through Japan to Chicago and then onto Alabama where his in-laws live; they’ll stay there, home-quarantining, and all is well.

Prayers

 Keep in prayer, please, many of our members and friends who are staying “hunkered down” during this virus crisis. 

 It’s beautiful hear that so many neighbors and friends are looking  after one another, delivering food and medicines, calling to let each other know that while  events like ours now make us feel alone, God is with us; we are never alone. 

 Thanks, folks, for all you do.

Pastor Jack is calling members and keeping in touch with the needs of the congregation.

Easter Service Bishop Ough will be giving a message on Keloland at 11 a.m. Easter Sunday.

The following is a message from him:

  

Easter cannot be canceled

Never in my wildest nightmare could I imagine asking my ministry colleagues to not hold in-

person Holy Week or Easter worship services.

But after much consultation, prayer, processing of data, and seeking to comply with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and our three state governments, I am extending my

earlier request and now asking that all our congregations suspend in-person worship until at least May 10, in compliance with the CDC’s eight-week ban on gatherings of 50 people or more and the closure of schools and many public places in the Dakotas-Minnesota Area. I will of course continue to monitor new data and directives, or relaxed restrictions, and update or

modify my request as appropriate.

Friends, we need to continue to be the first responders in our communities and lead the efforts to curtail the spread of this pandemic to our neighbors. This is a part of our missional

imperative to heal a broken world.

Frankly, I am an ambivalent jumble of feelings. I often find myself joining Jeremiah’s lament:

“Have you completely rejected Judah?

Does your heart loathe Zion?

Why have you struck us down

so that there is no healing for us?

We look for peace, but find no good

for a time of healing, but there

is terror instead.” (Jeremiah 14:19 NRSV)

At the same time, my heart is filled with compassion for those who are ill, our over-worked and under-resourced health care professionals, those losing jobs and businesses and retirement

funds, and our most vulnerable neighbors—the homeless, the elderly, those who cannot shelter in place.

My heart also swells with pride. I am humbled, encouraged, inspired by the resilience, speed, adaptability, and innovative spirit of our clergy and lay leadership. You are demonstrating time  and time again that canceling mass gatherings does not mean canceling community or ministry.

    You are bearing witness to the truth that social distancing does not have to lead to social isolation or neglected relationships or interrupted pastoral care. You are demonstrating time and time again that a pandemic does not kill our spirit of generosity. We remain a people to whom much has been given through our salvation and hope in Christ Jesus. 

    We are also still in the midst of Lent. The novelist Jim Crace authored a book in 1998 titled “Quarantine.” His fictitious narrative has Jesus quarantined in the wilderness with others forced or choosing to practice social distancing. This interesting twist on Jesus’ 40 days in the  wilderness has encouraged me to use these days of adapting my work and relational patterns as a time to listen more deeply to the movement of God’s Spirit in my heart and mind and soul.

    My Lenten journey has become richer as I have come to embrace being “quarantined.”

    And, here is the most important thing I am hearing: Regardless of what is happening in our world on April 12, Easter cannot be canceled. We may not be able to gather in our glorious Easter celebrations in our lily-decorated sanctuaries, but Easter cannot be canceled. The resurrection cannot be stopped or delayed or defeated!      

    As you already know, Easter does not come on the same date every year. Therefore, especially in a crisis, we can celebrate Easter anytime. Indeed, every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. We are called to live in the joy and victory of Easter every day. Perhaps this is a season to practice new, creative ways to express this resurrection joy and victory through our online worship, our pastoral care, and outreach ministries to those in desperate  need of food, mental health care, or even toilet paper and surgical masks. Perhaps this is a season to begin planning for an in-person Easter celebration in July or August or whenever we can gather again.

     While we and our practice of ministry are changing, and some things will continue to change for the unforeseeable future, we live in the confidence of the resurrection promise and   proclamation: Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed!

      

    Bishop Bruce R. Ough

    Resident Bishop, Dakotas-Minnesota Area

    The United Methodist Church

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The Story That Holds You in There

I greet you with the mystery and promise of Easter—each of us can have new life because Jesus has conquered death. 

Years ago, I attended a clergy continuing education event in which Dr. Peggy Way, then a professor of pastoral counseling at Vanderbilt Seminary, challenged us to get in touch with,

own, and rehearse the stories that “hold us in there.” You know, those stories of God’s in-breaking and in-dwelling love that “hold us in there” when all else seems dark, or chaotic, or hopeless and it feels like God has abandoned us.

I have several such stories in my life that I rehearse often in my prayer journal and in my preaching. In fact, many of you have heard these stories—stories of moving from death or despair or doubt or disillusionment to new hope, new expectancy, new joy, new faith.

Many of you have been guided in your Lenten journey this year by Tom Berlin’s book “Reckless Love” and the video reflections offered by the Dakotas and Minnesota Cabinets. Rev. Berlin

reminds us that “Jesus … died on the cross to offer us new life, no longer bound by the habits of sin or the inevitability of our physical death. Jesus understood that without death, there can be no new life …  The work of Jesus was to put sin to death, so that we could all find life.” This is Jesus’ ultimate expression of how to recklessly love with one’s whole heart, with one’s whole  life.

You see, the resurrection story, the story of Christ’s “reckless,” sacrificial love and victory over sin and death is the story that holds us in there as Christians. Our power, our purpose,

enthusiasm, and joy for life; our hope in the future; our desire to work for peace and justice; our ability to hang in there when facing the headwinds of a troubled, chaotic, divided world and

church all spring from the mystery and promise of the resurrection story:

• The mystery of a stone being rolled away from the tomb.

• The mystery of new life emerging from burial shrouds.

• The mystery of Jesus coming alive in the hearts of sinners like you and me.

• The mystery of followers of Jesus sacrificing fame and fortune so that others might have abundant life.   

    

    The resurrection story holds us in there precisely because it touches us—it grasps us—with the raw power of God’s mysterious, unmerited, extravagant, reckless grace. The resurrection story holds us in there precisely because it proves God is in the business of bringing captives home, setting prisoners free, healing people’s wounds, wiping away tears of grief, raising the dead to new life in Christ Jesus.

    

    Even though the healing may lie ahead of us, it is already a settled fact in the mind of God. God has already decided to heal the nations, to restore peace, to comfort the bereaved, to erase  injustice, to deliver God’s people. God yearns to unbind each of us from our grave clothes and set us free. God yearns for each of us to sing to the Lord a new song—a song of resurrection.      

    You see, the promise of Easter is that Christ’s victory is our victory. That’s the story that “holds us in there.” You can have a new life in Christ this very moment—even as you are viewing or   hearing this message. Christ can be born anew in your heart, unbind you from your death, and make you a resurrection person. That is the story—and I’m sticking with it!      

    May you, your family, and your congregation have a Happy Easter. Hold fast to the story that holds you in there. Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed!

        

    Bishop Bruce R. Ough

    Resident Bishop, Dakotas-Minnesota Area

    The United Methodist Church