Second Sunday After Pentecost | Bulletin
In many ways, the past few weeks have made me feel like I could see again, move again, breathe again. Walking outside without a mask for the first time was a strange experience, like I had left the house undressed or something. But smelling things: flowering trees, exhaust from a bakery or restaurant kitchen, even the trash lined up on the sidewalk, was such a welcome sensation. It was like I was smelling those things for the first time. Or at least smelling them in a different way. Or maybe it was I, who was different.
In Acts 9, a person named Saul (who later becomes Paul) goes through a traumatic experience. He is struck blind on his way to Damascus. He falls to the ground. He hears voices. He experiences an intense vulnerability, as he goes for three days without sight, without food, without water. At the end of those days, he is healed by a Ananias, someone Saul had thought of as an enemy. He begins to see again, but things look different. His life is different. He is different.
How will we emerge from these past 15 months of frustration, disappointment, sorrow, fear, trauma and grace? Can we even hope to look at things the same way? Would we want to? And who is the ‘we’ who are emerging into this new space?
These are questions each of us will answer. But they are questions our community will be living into as well. What’s a church look like, post-pandemic? Who knows? But not the same as we were before, of that I am certain.
Your fellow emerger (is that a word?),
K