On Sunday, Sept. 20, Union Chapel United Church of Christ celebrated its Homecoming and 150th Church anniversary.
We normally celebrate Homecoming on the fourth Sunday in May. We had put committees in place to celebrate our church anniversary all year with various activities that would culminate with a banquet late in the year. Well, then there came COVID-19 and everything was put on hold. Most of what we had planned, even the planning committees, were put on hold. We, like many others, thought it would disappear after a short time and we would return to normal. When that did not happen, we moved to a survival mode. We turned to Facebook for worship, to telephone and Zoom for meetings. Surely this will soon end and we can return to “normal.” But, after more than six months, it has not.
A few weeks ago, after some prayer and meditation, I announced to Union Chapel that we were going to move from surviving to thriving. We would live our lives in caution, but not in fear. I began acting like the whole congregation was following. In actuality, I knew that some do take that word seriously, while others would wait and see what happened, and still others would say that preacher is crazy.
The difference may be found in the way people are responding to the pandemic. Many “believers” know how to praise and be joyful when things are going well. However, they do not know how to praise and be joyful when life is not going the way they want it to?
In the Hebrew bible/the Old Testament, there is a story told about the Israelites when they were in captivity in Babylon in (NRSV) Psalm 137. While in exile, they gathered on the banks of the Euphrates which watered the fields of the city. They had a ceremony of lament/mourning over the destruction of Jerusalem and prayer for her restoration. “The Songs of Zion” were praise songs. Now in exile, the Israelites did not feel like praise (v1, 2) “… there we sat down and wept … on the willows there we hung up our harps.”
This passage is known as a community lament. Laments were done in times of sadness. When one is down and out, got the blues, depressed, those are times that the Israelites would lament according to many scholars. The doctor has given me bad news, I am out of money (my money is funny), my spouse does not love me anymore, we are not handling this remote learning thing well, I lost my job, I am in the middle of a pandemic, I cannot go to church or my house of worship and the list could go on.
To add to the misery, their captives wanted them to entertain by singing for them: (v3, 4) “… our captors asked us for songs … sing us one of the songs of Zion!” These were songs of joy that were sung to God. They were clear about to whom and for whom they were singing. They could not sing for their captors.
Even though the Israelites were sad by their predicament, the writer stated (v5): “If I forget you, O Jerusalem …” (Jerusalem was the symbol for God.) In other words, they were saying: if I forget God, who “is above my highest joy,” I might as well die. We have to find some joy in life in the mist of what is going on within and around us. I believe that will come to us when we keep God as our highest joy.
It would be nice to have some of the “things” back, like sports and going out to eat, and even going back to the structure that we call church. But, unless we center ourselves with our faith in God and seek to be with God’s people, we will just lament. I pray that we can move from lament to praise!
The Rev. Ervin Milton is pastor of the Union Chapel United Church of Christ, 5087 Union Ridge Road in north central Alamance County. Contact him at EEM5050@aol.com.
