Every week we’ve been having church online, I’ve been
posting the prerecorded sermon on youtube and then linking it to the church
website and posting it on Facebook—both the Boston Square Facebook page and the
Boston Square Facebook group.
This week when I went to post the sermon on Facebook, I
noticed that the banner photo on the top of the Boston Square group page had
gone missing. Not having much time at the moment but also not wanting to leave
it blank, I quickly searched through the photos that had previously been posted
by members and looked for one that had a number of Boston Square folks in it. I
found one, without too much trouble, of many of us gathered together around the
dumpster in back of church—with piles of trash all around us. It’s a picture we
take almost every spring—the “after” shot of all of us picking up trash in the neighborhood.
As I posted it, I reflected briefly on what has become a lovely
springtime tradition at Boston Square. We don’t invest that much into it and it
doesn’t require too much of our time or effort—and yet it makes a real
difference and we’ve even had neighbors send cards to the church in
appreciation. I lamented the fact that we probably wouldn’t be picking up trash
this year—though I did wonder for a bit if we could still pick up trash in a
socially-distanced manner (one person per side of street, taking turns dropping
off trash bags at the dumpster…and why is it that the trash piling up on the
sides of Kalamazoo Ave doesn’t seem to be abating while everyone is staying at
home?!?). And I had a pang of loss as I smiled at seeing familiar faces and
missed our gatherings together.
What I hadn’t anticipated was that Facebook alerts group
members that the photo has been updated. And that means that a number of Boston
Square folks saw the photo of us together. And there was a wave of group lament—yearning
for the day when we can gather together and hug one another again.
Technology has been a real blessing in the midst of this
time of social-distancing. Our kids have been able to connect with cousins over
Zoom in ways they otherwise would have needed to wait until summer to be able
to do. We’ve had people from all over the United States and all over the world
join us for worship on Sunday morning. And yet, one thing technology has not
been able to do is replace hugs. Hugging our loved ones far away. Hugging our
loved ones living just down the street. Hugging friends—even those we normally
would never even hug.
I had one friend who spent last week creating what his
family called the “Hug-able”—a sheet of plastic that could be taped around the doorframes
of the front door of a house. They had cut four holes in the sheet and taped
garbage bags over the holes—two going in one direction and two in the other so
that one person could stand on one side of the sheet and another on the other
and they could each put their arms in the holes with the garbage bags and reach
out and hug the other—with plastic separating them the whole way like some sort
of grown-up version of those devices they have in the NICU that allow parents
to reach in and touch and hold their premature babies without risking
contamination. I’m pretty sure my friend’s contraption doesn’t meet CDC
guidelines—but when they brought it to his mother-in-law’s house and recorded
her reaction in being able to hug her daughter and her grandchildren again for the
first time in a month, it was absolutely profound and beautiful.
As part of the recording my friend made, his wife, moments
before hugging her mother, noted that her desire to hug and hold her loved one—her
mother—was just a small microcosm of what God’s love for us is like. God’s
desire to hug and to hold us. After this whole coronavirus crisis is over, I
don’t think I’ll ever read the Parable of the Lost Son quite the same again.
Envisioning God as the father, constantly looking out the window, over the
fence, down the road, yearning…yearning…yearning to be able to hug us again.
Longing for the day we will come into his embrace. So deeply desiring to hold
us and never let us go. That is God’s love for us.
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