Last Sunday was a glorious day! We welcomed congregants, some of you, back to the sanctuary. The choir on the chancel was in great voice. Children, some of them, attended classes for the first time in two years. The energy in the sanctuary was so different from the hundred or so Sundays when the seats have been empty. Sunday was a glorious day.
Such a big part of the day was renewing relationships. As I stood in the lobby before and after the service, it was like a reunion of close and dear friends. Well, that is because it was a reunion of close and dear friends.
But there were visitors in church, too. Several visitors who came to check out worship at First Unitarian. With our doors open once again, we all need to be ready to welcome new folks with new hopes and new needs and new skills and new energy.
Welcome is central to the life of the church.
The sanctuary was not full on Sunday. Many of us are not quite ready to return. Some of us may decide to come in person a little less often, even when we are comfortable coming. The experience of Covid has changed us and we are not quite sure exactly how yet.
Re-gathering the community will take some time. The community that will gather will almost certainly gather differently. More of us, more often may well attend on-line than before Covid. I will be surprised if that is not the case. And there will be people we will miss, people who for one reason or another won’t make First Unitarian part of their life as we re-gather.
But there will be people visiting as well.
The welcome that we offer, the welcome that I tried to convey on Sunday needs to extend to all of us: long-time members and friends, those attending in-person but also those attending on-line, and individuals and families who have decided that they need a church and just come through our doors.
The Responsive Reading I wrote for last Sunday tried to speak to this. Several people asked me to share it. I offer it to you as a kind of blessing for these next weeks and months, as the church that will be begins to emerge.
We Bid You Welcome by Bill Sinkford
We welcome those of you who are here physically today
Who are sitting in the hard wooden theater seats
Wearing your masks, wondering how close is safe
Yet so glad to be here.
We bid you welcome.
We welcome those of you who are joining us virtually
From your living room or your breakfast table
Who come yearning for connection
But not quite ready to cross the threshold here.
We bid you welcome.
We welcome those of you who are new to this community,
Those here in the sanctuary for the first time
Those on-line who may never have seen this sanctuary
Those at a distance who still make their meaning among us.
We bid you welcome.
We welcome the younger members of this community
Who gather in their classrooms for the first time
In two years. Two years in their lives is such a long time.
It is such a long time in all of our lives.
We bid you welcome.
This space where we gather is defined not by
The walls of this sanctuary
This space is shaped by our faith and hope and love
And by the promise we make again today
To build a community worthy of being called
Beloved.
From all of us,
To all of us:
Welcome Home.