March 19, 2020
10:30 a.m. Worship
Preacher: Rev. Anne J. Scalfaro
Scripture: Mark 12:28-44 (NRSV)
Title: Drawing Near As We Draw Apart
In Mark 12, Jesus and a scribe have an interaction where both reiterate the greatest commandment: to love God and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. When the scribe repeats this back to him, Jesus says to the scribe: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” The more we love, the closer we are to actualizing the kin-dom of God. That should be good news for us. But often we define loving God and loving neighbor in ways that have become so normalized and routine to us that we aren’t forced to grow in new ways. Well, that’s no longer true, is it?
COVID-19 has landed us in a time of unprecedented unknowns. We feel far away from one another and from our normal routines. We are perhaps feeling emotions that we haven’t felt before. What does it mean to love and to draw near in a time of social distancing? After the exchange of Jesus with the scribe, we are given two examples of people living out their faith. We can learn a lot from their actions. What pushes people away? What draws people in?
It’s kind of paradoxical, but in this time of physically distancing ourselves from one another, we have an opportunity to draw nearer God, one another, and ourselves in ways that we’ve perhaps never tried before. What does it mean to love God, love neighbor, and love self in such a time as this? Join us on the livestream Sunday as we unpack the greatest commandment and see it in a new light. Perhaps it is more relevant now than it ever has been before.
Worship will be posted as a video on our Youtube channel, website and Facebook page. THERE WILL BE NO LIVESTREAMING SUNDAY MORNING.