By: David McCleary
My name is David McCleary and I am one of the pastoral staff here at ETCBC.
This time of forced separation and isolation from each other has been difficult for everyone. And even though many of us have been privileged enough to have been able to work from home, it has nonetheless disrupted our normal rhythms of life and radically changed the way we do life and life together, from the way we celebrate all the significant passages of life, whether that is in celebrating the birth of a child, celebrating a graduation or in commemorating the passing of those we love.
At ET, we celebrate our call to live as the redeemed people of God because of our belief and benefit from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We are indeed the body of Christ. Jesus said: ‘Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life… Whoever eats of this bread will live forever… [John 6:47-51] This is what forms the central hope and shapes our lived reality of faithful community as the body of believers here at ET.
Recently some of the members of our church family have lost family and friends. And because of COVID they have not been able to mourn or mark the passing of those they loved in the usual ways, no big funerals or family meals together to tell our stories of them and share all that they meant to us or how their love enriched our lives every day. This had made their deaths, already terrible and significant, so much more difficult to bear, on our own.
But as the people of God, we are never called to do it on our own. We are called to find our lives through the redeeming love of God at work in us. We are called to be the salt and light, because we have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. Sometimes in the midst of sadness or pain we lose sight of that love and light, especially overwhelmed by the shadow of death. We need those other parts of the body of Christ to love us through our pain, through our grief and through the hurt and loss. We have to be reminded that even though we are separated we are not alone – even though we are crushed we are not destroyed – even though we are down we are not out. That we are loved, that we are God’s and that He will never leave us or abandon us, and that when we are absent from the body, we are present with Christ, one day, we will see them again, in a place without pain or loss, fully present in the light of God’s complete love.
But until that great day, we have to be the hands and feet and beating heart of God’s love made flesh – we have to care for each other – reach out to those we know who are in the midst of the pain of their immediate loss and show them in real and practical ways the love and light of God in these dark times with a phone call, a text, a care package… just a small token to remind them still that they are loved, that those they lost are missed and that we together are one body, the body of God, bound together in love.
God bless you all.