A Community of Faith

By Dale Sollom-Brotherton

Living as a community of faith during this pandemic is, well, quite a challenge. One of the mainstays of our life together is actually being together. We’re having to find other ways to be a community: Online, telephone, mail.

This unprecedented situation forced me — and many of us — to reflect on some of the Big Questions: Where is God in all of this? How does my faith guide and strengthen me? What resources do I have?

Here’s what it means for me:

Community. Even though we cannot be together in person, the strength of those relationships has staying power. Whether someone is new to a faith community or not, there is always a welcome there. Come as you are!

Having one another is a huge resource. Any of us can believe in God on our own. But there is strength in numbers. Whether it’s a wedding, a funeral, a birth, or a pandemic, it’s great to be surrounded and supported by others.

Serving. It is all too easy to be controlled by fear for ourselves, especially if we allow ourselves to be consumed by the news. Most all faith traditions get us outside ourselves by helping us to respond to the needs of others. We are all learning in a painful way that we are connected together.

Engaging in specific acts of service deepens that connection and keeps us from being fearfully isolated.

A Bigger Picture. Faith traditions are all rooted in history. We have stories in our faith about how others have responded to demanding and difficult circumstances.

When we hear those accounts we realize that others, who have come before us, have been here, too. Persecutions, plagues, and natural disasters have kindled new depths of faith and action. We pray that this pandemic will do the same for us.

God. Of course we pray that this will end soon. But we also pray for so much more: The safety of medical workers, the homeless, those with increased risk, the lonely, researchers, our loved ones.

We wonder what God may want us to learn. In my own Christian faith tradition, I find comfort in a God who has become one of us and who suffers what we suffer — a God who brings us new life in ways we can’t predict or fully explain.

Our Scriptures teach us to see Christ in those around us. Sometimes that’s incredibly difficult! But if we can persist in that perspective, we may find ourselves changed.

Even more, as Martin Luther put it, we are to be “little Christs” for our neighbor. This way of being and doing provides a path forward through this pandemic and almost anything else that we may face.

•••

Dale Sollom-Brotherton has been the pastor at Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos since 2009.