“What is this place where we are meeting?  Only a house, the earth its floor, walls and a roof sheltering people, windows for light, an open door… we are gathered here, and know our God is near.”
            These are words from the first hymn in our Hymnal Worship Book. They reminds us that God is present wherever we are. 
            Recall the story of Jacob in Genesis 28:10-22 where he lies down with only a stone for a pillow and dreams. God promises to be with him and to keep him. And when Jacob awakes he says, “Surely the Lord is in this place.” Jacob wandered, but God was with him wherever he went.
            The people of God have worshiped in many places: basements, upper rooms, catacombs and caves, around kitchen tables, in school rooms, inside and outside. I think about how the early Anabaptists needed to find alternative places to gather, as did the Ethiopian Christians in the 1980’s. And yet they grew in faith and numbers. There was no need to meet in the buildings built as churches. They created holy spaces where ever they were and met God there. 
            Today we have to find our own sacred spaces in our homes and fields. We do not gather in that building in Elbing we call church. Yet we are still the church. We still worship God. God is still present with us.  
            I miss the congregational singing, and the informal conversations and seeing people. This is not what I expected to happen in Spring. So much has been canceled or changed. Yet God is still in our midst.
            Let me end with a quote from David Brubaker: “Perhaps the greatest takeaway from our current virtual reality is that we were never meant primarily to attend a congregation, but to be a congregation. In this crisis time, we can explore more deeply what it means to be a congregation. After all, what is a “congregation” but a group of human beings who “congregate” periodically, to connect with and encourage one another—and then to scatter once again…to love and to serve.”
​

​Gathering hymn                         “I sing the mighty power of God”                                 HWB #46


 ; rendition by the Kansas Mennonite Men's Chorus, 2003 Spring Concert
 
Call to worship (unison)                                                                                                from WW2, #28
Dear Lord, we come before you eager to praise you,
      ready to set aside our thoughts and musings of the week to come.
Guide us into worship as we year to see, hear and feel your presence this hour. Amen.
 
Children’s Time                                            {video}                                      –Jeremy & Steph Entz family

 
Scripture                                       Matthew 7:1-6, Romans 2:1-4
 
Meditation                                     “Results of judging” {video}                                 –Rosie Epp
 
Response Hymn                                      “Lead me, Lord”                                           HWB #538
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIwxmEKdIQw
>; as performed by the Choir of Somerville College, Oxford, England
 
Offering                                        Mennonite Central Committee
Thanks to those who’ve mailed in donations or dropped them by the church; when preparing checks, please make to “Zion Mennonite Church,” and then indicate the designation in the memo line.
 
Sharing (Please communicate to the pastors any sharing you’d like distributed in the future.
• As best we’re aware, members and friends of our church family continue to be reasonably healthy at present.
• WDC pastors and congregation members facing financial stress due to the impact of coronavirus.
• a Virginia Mennonite Missions team that helped build a community center in Peru, partnering with Mennonite Mission Network. Pray for Elena and Freddy Buckwalter de Satalaya, jointly sponsored by the two agencies, and for the leadership team in Peru as they use the center for kids’ activities and worship services.
• Mennonite World Conference notes that planting and harvesting is disrupted by the global pandemic, and some farmers are eating their seed stock out of necessity; pray for an equitable distribution of food in the months to come, and that wealthy countries would not look only to their own interests.
• Help us all to practice social distancing and have the discipline to stay home as much as possible, encouraging others to do the same (without shaming them). And may we have hope even in the face of daunting headlines.
 
Video Sharing: (We are posting a link to several short video clips from Zion families, offering prayer requests, greetings, perspective on their recent activities, challenges and celebrations during this period, favorite movies/reading/recipes, etc.).
 
Prayer                                                                                                                            –Ray Reimer
Great God, we hear the good news that your love endures forever, and we rejoice.
      But dear God, your ways are sometimes inscrutable, your judgments unsearchable--
            and your patience defies all understanding.
      We thank you, dear God, for meeting us where we are, and for respecting our human condition,
We confess, dear Lord, that we are not always the creatures you created us to be.
      We rush to judge others… or we hold back in offering the discernment we might.
      For this we ask your—and each others'—forgiveness.
Because we are not sufficient of ourselves,
            provide the requisite wisdom, we pray,
            to guide our lives, especially in these rapidly-changing, challenging days.
      Give us the grace to weigh our actions in light of their consequences on others.
      Calm our anxieties, Lord; and remind us of our ultimate trust.
We pray for others as much as we pray for ourselves:
      for the lonely and the home-bound and the quarantined, who can no longer go where they would like; and for those suddenly un- or under-employed;
            we pray that love and practical support will come from others to sustain them.
      for the sick in need of relief from bodily pain;
            we pray for their recovery, if it be your will.
      for those who grieve the death of ones they have dearly loved;
            we pray good memories endure, and new hope be grasped.
May our prayers and our actions sustain our sisters and brothers, and bind us together in your name—even if we are not able to be physically close to each other.
      Yes, make your church an example of love at work with reverence both for you and the humanity that you've created.
God of yesterday, today, and forever,
            you have given us hope for what we do not yet see, so grant us patience to wait for it.
      May we live each day in expectation of the fulfillment of your promises.
      Thus we pray, hallowing your name,
            today and in all eternity.    Amen.
 
Sending Hymn                         “The peace of the earth be with you”                                   SJ #77
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYsTzXby4vU
>; rendition by John L. Bell, There Is One Among Us: Shorter Songs for Worship (1999).
 
Benediction                                                                                                                from WW2, #155
May there be love and understanding in our hearts and in our world.
May peace and friendship offer shelter from life's storms.
May we be released from our deep fears and our fruitless guilt.
May we have the courage to speak truth against violence and suffering.
Guiding Spirt, bless our journey with these good companions,
      that we may be drenched with the longing for peace, to make justice blossom on earth. Amen.

​1) Children's Time, focusing on Matthew 18.21-35 (re forgiveness), led by the Jeremy & Steph Entz family: <https://youtu.be/mFWfUfZlcI0>.
2) Meditation, focusing on Matthew 7:1-6, Romans 2:1-4 (re judging), by Rosie Epp: <https://youtu.be/bmcz3Kkn5KI
>.

3) Video Sharing, featuring—Ben & Halie Duerksen's family; Thelma Wedel; Wes & Bonnie Brewer’s family: <https://youtu.be/R8feFIEhLc0
>.

Disease pandemics have been endemic through much of antiquity—indeed, until quite recently. Lists of epidemics illustrate one variety of disease or another nearly constantly in existence[1]; researchers of the “Black Death” (usually associated with the bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis) believe it was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671.[2]
            Modern understandings of germ theory and viruses did not yet exist. One “scientific” theory from the 1300s blamed the heavens for the disease, suggesting it was caused by the conjunction of three planets in that year which resulted in a “great pestilence in the air” (e.g., the so-called “miasma theory”).[3] Yes, they had 5G hoaxes then, too. As a consequence, some of the counsel offered by “experts” regarding conduct and response was not the wisest.
            Specific locales were affected in different ways. Some would be spared for decades; others experienced repeated outbreaks year after year, especially in cities where folks lived in close proximity and sanitation was problematic. Amsterdam in the Netherlands shows up in records as being “visited” by the plague in 1557, 1558, and 1559[4]—which happens to overlap with some of the fiercest persecution of Anabaptists.[5]
            On November 14, 1558, Menno Simons, the emerging leader of Anabaptists, wrote the following to the flock in Amsterdam, from where he was living in Holstein at the time (northeast of Hamburg, along the Baltic seacoast)[6]:
      “Elect brethren and sisters in the Lord, I hear that the fire of pestilence is beginning to rage in your vicinity…. Be strong in the Lord, be of good cheer, be comforted. For your whole life and death is lodged in the hands of the Lord. All your hairs are numbered, and without Him not one shall drop from your head. The number of your days, nay, your life, is measured as by handbreadths by Him. Therefore do not fear but willingly serve each other in time of need. Oh, do not let the visiting of the sick vex you, for by this you shall be established in love… It is also the nature of true love to lay down our lives for [each other]. 1 John 3:16.”[7]
            In our day, we presumably should do our visiting “virtually” or at a social-distance in order to promote safety, but otherwise Menno’s encouragement offers us food for thought as well.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
>.

[2] J. N. Hays, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Un. Press, 1998), p. 58.

[3] Rosemary Horrox, The Black Death (Manchester: Manchester Un. Press, 1994), p. 159.

[4] Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Un. Press), p. 275.

[5] Van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror records approximately 60 executions in the 1558, most of them occurring in the Netherlands (pp. 573-591).

[6] Harold S. Bender, “A Brief Biography of Menno Simons,” in John C. Wenger, ed., The Complete Writings of Menno Simons (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1974), p. 21.

[7] “Pastoral Letter to the Amsterdam Church,” in Wenger, Complete Writings, pp. 1057-1059.

​         A sigh of relief and deliverance that finally the endless pain and torment are over at last. The suffering ended. Death is now a blessing. Jesus’ cry is not a cry of defeat or despair, but one of triumph. He has endured to the end. The strife is over, the battle won.
         Jesus gave his life for us. He suffered and died that we might be made whole. What love is this? What did Jesus come to accomplish? What do we learn about obedience?
         Hymn: “Alas! and did my Savior bleed,” HWB #253

Being on the cross is not a quiet death. One hangs there for hours. The cross is an instrument of torture. The day wears on, minutes stretch to hours, the body weakens yearning for something so basic as water. Water to moisten a parched mouth and free a swollen tongue, to keep one alive just a few moments longer. Did the words of Psalm 63 (O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee…) go through Jesus’ mind? Is thirsting for water a thirst for life? For God?

         Jesus is often referred to as living water. The image of streams flowing in the desert or rivers in dry land are promises throughout Scripture. How do these fit with Jesus cry for water? What does water mean to you and your life? What is the significance of the sponge being offered to Jesus on a branch of hyssop?

         Hymn: “Ah, holy Jesus,” HWB #254

We invite you to share communion together as family's tomorrow evening. As noted previously, you'll want to gather some juice and bread together ahead of time.
Pastor Weldon, Rosie and I recorded a service you can join when convenient: <https://youtu.be/4tsOIUJiRWg>. Karen Andres assisted with some accompanying.

​ It had to be agonizing, tortuous to hang on the cross for hours—the crown of thorns on his head, the body dehydrating from hanging in the heat all day. Jesus who found his purpose and strength in the presence of God now found himself utterly despairing, cut off from all that gives life and breath. The mystery of the crucifixion is that there is no despair so deep or evil so overwhelming that God has not been there before us and where God cannot meet us.
            Why do you think the sun stopped shining? Verse 34 includes a quote from Psalm 22 (read the Psalm). What is significant about this quote?
            Hymn: “O Sacred Head,” HWB #252