Weekly E-Pistle: Third Sunday in Lent

And Now for Something Mostly Different...

​Dear DUCCies,

Well, life has changed rather dramatically for us for the time being. Sunday morning church services are suspended until the threat passes, and meetings of 10 or more people are going online or being suspended. 


And it hasn't been easy, has it? At Lent we are always asked to go inward, be still, be contemplative. But perhaps not quite this inward? 

I know this is much harder for those of us who are grieving, who live alone, who are coping with illness. Who are extroverts. Please remember we are still here, still together in spirit, and we are finding ways to check in on one another, visit, pray, find some ways to laugh. 

Three of our church members in the official virus risk group (over 60) in my neighborhood just had our first Zoom video chat yesterday. It was super easy and really helps! Others are using their phones' video calling services -- Facetime, Skype, Facebook Messenger/Video, Google Duo -- to check on one another and neighbors and kids and grandkids, to call for no special reason at all, just to hear voices and see faces. It's not the same, but can relieve feelings of isolation. Please make time to check with those you know might be struggling with this. Meanwhile, I've scheduled Zoom Cafe meetups for us for 10am on Sunday mornings. Here is the link. Or you can find it by clicking on this event on our Church Calendar.

And as always, if you are having a hard time, or need help, or someone to talk with, drop a note to your Congregational Care Team. We are here for you!

This E-pistle will look and act just a bit different for the rest of these Sabbatical weeks, and then when Pastor Sal returns, we will think again about how to be the church in this time.

Rest assured, Sal will be back. He is safe. Gregg is safe. 

This E-Pistle carries our first experiment in Home Churching, after the announcements, including our readings, prayers, and  Sabbatical speakers' homilies, a kind of online kit for Being the Church. These elements will be delayed by four days in lectionary time. That is, last Sunday's service is in this E-Pistle, this coming Sunday's next week, etc. 

If we need to reach out to you quickly, we will use email, as we did last week. If you did not get our announcement about services by email last week, it's because I don't have your correct email address. Please feel free to drop me a line if you want to be sure to get these more urgent email notes from us.

Meanwhile your Church Council has been meeting online and in person. They are staying abreast of Federal, State, and Local updates and recommendations to citizens and churches about how to mitigate the spread of the virus, #FlattenTheCurve, and keep our whole community safe.

If you wonder whether a church group or event is scheduled or suspended, the best place to keep up is our online calendar. Click on events to get all the details. 

Peace and Grace on your hearts and homes, beloved DUCCies.
I love you all so much (said Dorothy, and),
Julie

---

---

UCC's Coronavirus Update and a Prayer
​

Click here for thethe latest update from the UCC's leadership...

And here is a prayer shared by the UCC, for medical scientists working to fight the coronavirus, by Alden Solovy from his book Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing.
https://reformjudaism.org/blog/2020/02/27/coronavirus-prayer-medical-scientists

---

One Great Hour of Sharing

One Great Hour of Sharing® is one of four special mission offerings of the United Church of Christ. This Lenten Offering supports the disaster, refugee, and development ministries of the UCC.  The suggested offering date for the One Great Hour of Sharing offering is March 22, 2020, but since most of the UCC churches in this country won't be meeting on Sunday, please either click right here any time, to give securely online or mail your gift today to One Great Hour of Sharing - United Church of Christ, 700 Prospect Avenue, Financial Services, 6th Floor, Cleveland, Ohio 44115. Thank you for caring for all of God's people.

---

New Gestures and Old

In these early days of social distancing, it can be awkward, socially, to figure out how to renegotiate personal space. Practicing some old fashioned and newfangled social cues are necessary here. Making way for others on the sidewalk, at doorways, gesturing to allow people in front of you, holding up a hand to remind dear friends to stop -- all of these gestures and habits will help us all remind each other to keep 6-to-10 feet from one another. It's an automatic gesture to reach out to shake hands, but try hard to develop a new habit, touching your heart and giving a slight bow, or use the Namaste signal, or cross your arms over your heart and make eye contact. Or... wear a really, really big hoop skirt! Whatever it takes. We can do what it takes.

---

Contemplation Service Still in Session

At the moment, the guideline for mitigation of disease is to stay 6-10 feet away from one another and to not congregate in the same room with more than 10 people. Our Wednesday Evening Contemplation service will observe these restrictions by limiting attendance to 10 in the Sanctuary while also disinfecting surfaces as we leave. If sitting in contemplative prayer or writing or reading feels better in the sanctuary and among friends right now, please remember this service is still taking place at 5:30 on Wednesday evenings. It's a relatively safe place to connect with Spirit in community and remembrance.  A peaceful feeling of spiritual connection to all those that have sat in that room and in those pews.  Click here to connect with Paul Burdick if you'd like more information.

---

Feeding the Gap

THE COORDINATED COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO FEED SCHOOL FAMILIES DURING THE COVID-19 SCHOOL CLOSURE. 

Saugatuck Public Schools and Fennville Public Schools will make two meals a day available to all students during the State of Michigan mandated school closure.

Up to two meals a day are available for each student according to the schools’ regular meal service. A coalition of community partners, spearheaded by Children First Lakeshore and Community Church of Douglas, will provide supplemental meals distributed through the delivery routes of each school district. Beginning this week, both school districts will offer meal delivery along bus routes as well as at pick-up sites during the week.

Children First Lakeshore and partners will provide weekend and supplemental food also delivered by the school districts. The supplemental food is designed to feed students beyond the two meals the school districts are providing. The delivery schedules and pick-up information is different for each school district. 

We are Working to Raise 120K to Feed the Gap!

• Raised: $6,000
• New Goal: $114,000

If you can help contribute to this cause, click here.
If you can volunteer to help feed the kids click here.

If you would like to send a paper check, send it here:
Children First Lakeshore, PO Box 980 Douglas, MI 49406
For more information email [email protected]

---

SDVolunteers.com

The area churches are supporting our government offices, police departments and fire departments, all first responders, by gathering and mobilizing a team of volunteers who can help out with various tasks and needs of community members. If you are healthy, mobile, and willing to help in this way, go to SDVolunteers.com, and add your name to this list.

---

Home Churching!
Everything you need to do church at home...
​

Happy Birthdays and Anniversaries
March 16- Gemina Petruzzelli,  17- Peter Black, Dan Mack

Prayer List -- For Healing, Wholeness, Peace
The Boston/Austin family, especially Jason, Mike, and Kathy, Curtis Coffin, Ann Hopkins, Drew Carter, Richard Graham, Elaine Overweg, Bertha Fonseka, Garth & Myra (Mary Nyhof’s Parents).

All in the military and their families. All who are homeless or addicted or abused or neglected or rejected or hungry; The UCC; the Grand West Association; our Church Council; our Stephen Ministers; our church committees; our communities, our schools, our nation and our planet.

To add/remove a name from the Prayer List, please email julie@douglasucc.org.

Financial Stewardship Report:
March 15 
Attendance: 0
Easter Flowers: $60
Collections by mail: $870 
Online Giving: $875
Total: $1,805

Thank you!! Your generous giving allows us to sustain our church community and our mission of service.

At this time, without our in-service collections, our church especially needs you to consider giving online, which is easily done by clicking here to our website.  

Or sending your checks by mail to:
Douglas UCC, 56 Wall Street, P.O. Box 519, Douglas, MI, 49406

---

(For home churching, you may wish to light candles, put on some soft, wordless music, find a place in your home where you will be undisturbed, silence your cell phones and computers... )

Introit
We are not alone. We live in God’s world.
We are not alone. We live in God’s world.
We are called to seek out justice, to proclaim Christ, crucified and risen.
Our light, and our hope. We are not alone. We are not alone. We are not alone.

Call to Worship, based on   Psalm 95

One: O come, let us sing to God.
Many: Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
One: Let us come into God's presence with thanksgiving;
Many: Let us make a joyful noise to God with songs of praise! 
One: In God's hand are the depths of the earth;
Many: The heights of the mountains are also God's.
One: The sea is God's, for God made it.
Many: And the dry land, too, which God's hands have formed.
One: God is our God, and we are the people of God's pasture.
Many: Let us make a joyful noise to God with songs of praise.

Opening Hymn, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say

Unison Prayer
Deep within me is a deep and insistent craving for that which the Christ Spirit alone can give. In the past, I may have wrongly interpreted this craving as a thirst for success or material things. Now, I clearly understand that my thirst is for a greater consciousness of God's love and for a greater expression of Divine wisdom. My true desire is to have more of the character of God made manifest in my every thought, word, and deed. I know the Christ Spirit can give me what nothing else can give. Therefore I nourish my thirst, knowing it is leading me to that complete awareness of Christ which satisfies completely at all times. Amen.

Assurance of Grace and Peace

One: Peace be with you.
Many: And also with you.
One: Let us offer one another a sign of Peace.

(Here you may wish to hold your hands toward a window in your home, and send the peace and light out into the world.)

Passing the Peace

Spirit of life come unto me. 
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.  
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea,
move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close – wings set me free. 
Spirit of life come to me, come to me.  

Words of Integration & Guidance, by Bishop John Shelby Spong  

Almost any poll of regular church goers will reveal that their favorite book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John. Yet, I suspect that these devotees of John’s Gospel would be both shocked and angered by contemporary insights into this treasured book. Among the conclusions that I have reached in my intensive study of John’s Gospel are these: There is no way it was written by any of the disciples of Jesus. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over a period of 25 to 30 years. Not one of the miracles recorded in this book was, in all probability, something that actually happened. This means that Jesus never changed water into wine, fed a multitude with five loaves and two fish or raised Lazarus from the dead.  Many of the characters who appear in the pages of this book are literary creations of its author and were never intended to be understood as real people, who actually lived in history. John’s Gospel seems to ridicule anyone who might read this book as a work of literal history. For example, Jesus says to Nicodemus: “You must be born again.” Nicodemus, the literalist, says: “Born again? How can I crawl back into my mother’s womb?” Jesus says to the Samaritan woman: “I will give you living water.” The Samaritan woman, a literalist, responds: “Man, you don’t even have a bucket!” The Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. leaned on John’s Gospel as literal history in order to formulate the creeds and ultimately to undergird such doctrines as the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity. John’s Gospel is not a literal history, but rather a symbolic text to describe the experience of the human breaking the boundaries of consciousness and entering into the transformation available inside a sense of a mystical oneness with God. Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order.

The Words of Holy Scripture
One: A Reading of Scripture from Exodus 17:1-7
From the wilderness, the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages,
as God commanded. They camped at Rephidim,
but there was no water for the people to drink. The
people quarreled with Moses, and said,
"Give us water to drink," Moses said to them,
"Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test God?"
But the people thirsted there for water; and the
people complained against Moses and said,
"Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and
our children and livestock with thirst?"
So Moses cried out to God,
"What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me."
God said to Moses,
"Go on ahead of the people,
and take some of the elders of Israel with you;
take in your hand the staff with which you struck
the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you
on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock,
and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink."
Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.
He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and
tested God, saying,
"Is God among us or not?"

One: Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
Many: Thanks be to God.

The Gospel Lesson
One: The Holy Gospel according to John 4:5-42
Many: Glory to you, O Christ.
Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his
son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." The Samaritan woman said to him,  "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a
woman of Samaria" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered
her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,'  you
would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him,
"Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you
greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank
from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those
who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will
become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give
me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." Jesus
said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no
husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband' for you have had five
husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" The
woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this
mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to
her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship God neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know.
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship God in spirit
and truth, for the God seeks such as these. God is spirit, and those who worship God must
worship in spirit and truth."

One: Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.
Many: Praise to you, O Christ.

---

​Max moved from Kalamazoo to Douglas in 2015 with his husband, Doug, and their dog, Harry. They now have adopted a cat named Pansy. Max spent 45 years as a hairdresser beginning in Los Angeles, later St. Joseph, MI, then Kalamazoo, and now Saugatuck. Max was a theatre major at WMU, and he was in pre-ministerial training with the Unity Church in the 1990’s. He enjoys painting and is actively involved in our church community.

Doxology    
Grateful for the life you give us, thankful for your Holy Son, 
Joyful in your Spirit flowing over all O God of Love.  
Grateful for the bread of heaven, thankful for your holy word, 
Joyful in your mercy flowing, we will praise you.

Celebration of Holy Communion
One: God be with you.
Many: And also with you.
One: Lift up your hearts.
Many: We lift them up to God.
One: Let us give thanks to God.
Many: It is good to give God thanks and praise.

And now we prepare the gifts of bread and wine in Holy Communion with
our unseen, but fully felt congregation.

In the United Church of Christ, we say, “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, please know that you are invited, welcome, and worthy to receive these gifts.” And, so, with great joy, let us join our voices together and sing:

Creation’s Praise
Santo, santo, santo, mi corazon te adora.
Mi corazon te sabe decir, santo eros Dios.
Holy, holy, holy, my heart, my heart adores you.
My heart is glad to say the words, you are holy God. 

(Take a section of the communion bread in your hands and say:)

At the last meal that Jesus shared with his friends, he took some bread, and he said,
“Thank you” to God for it. As he broke the bread, Jesus said to his friends,
“This bread is my body. Whenever you eat it, remember me.”

(Hold the section of the bread up high for a moment after you say this)

(Then, pour your juice or wine into a cup, and say...)

(Then, place both your hands over the bread and wine and say...)

And, so, we call upon the Holy Spirit to bless these gifts of bread and wine, and to
bless all those who approach this table to receive these gifts this morning, that they
may recognize that the Presence and the Power of the Christ dwells
with them and within them.

Breaking of Bread – Let Us Be Bread
Let us be bread, blessed by the Lord,
broken and shared, life for the world.
Let us be wine, love freely poured. 
Let us be one with the Lord. 
Say:  I receive the Bread of Life.
(Eat.)

Say: I receive the Cup of Love, the Drink of Compassion.
(Drink.)

See your normal place in the congregation. See yourself holding the hands, and all the hands, holding hands. linking us all together. Breathe that in for a minute. And then say...

Prayer of Thanksgiving & the Lord’s Prayer
Our Mother/Father, always and everywhere, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
​For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

---

Hymn of Sending, "Somebody's Knocking at Your Door"

Benediction
Our worship this morning has come to a close, but now our service in the world continues. So, let us go forth to live fully, to love wastefully, and to have the courage to be all that God has created us to be. We are a grateful people, and so it is. Amen.

---