For this celebration, we will be recalling the saints. We won’t be able to have our procession to light candles during “For All The Saints”, but we will mark the two lives from our community that have come to their earthly end during this year.  We will do that in two ways: First, we will have a video presentation with the hymn. For that we will need photos of your loved ones who are no longer with us.  They do not need to have died this year, or even recently. The more the better. Send them to pastortim@flcsm.org OR you can make arrangements to bring physical photos to church to be scanned, again email Pastor TIm. 

Another way to honor the saints is with names. Even if you do not have photographs available, send names to be included in the procession. They will be made into a physical representation of procession of ‘the saints in light’. 

Advent is a time for waiting. Something we are familiar with this year. But unlike most waiting, we know the end of the Advent waiting story. This is a waiting in faith for an ending that is certain: the promises that God is in Christ reconciling the whole world.  Does that mean there is nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, no reason to say we are tired of waiting? No. Advent hope has room for all of that, but also ties to our faith that tells us we know the end of the story. Just as we stood at the cross knowing that the end of the story is not the end of the story, we hear the prophet’s reminder that God is already at work to save.

In that sense, we have already been in Advent for a while. But this year we will make it official earlier. Advent was once marked for 6 to 7 weeks, and has had different themes to it. Sometimes it was celebrated in much the same way as Lent (Many may remember when it used purple as a sign of preparation and fasting as we do in Lent, rather than blue as a sign of hope.) We will be using many of the regular November texts but with worship and preaching around a theme of waiting and longing. We will also have some other texts that do not show up in our lectionary but give a richness to the coming of Christ. 

We will also start the Christmas themes a bit early. We do this in part because we are all waiting for so many things, and the least we can do is sing the most loved Christmas songs (and some newer ones) sooner.  

Like so many things this year, Christmas will not be normal. Even though we have begun to have in-person worship, there are many reasons that a traditional service indoors is just not practical this year. We always have many guests at that service, and we have no reliable way of communicating the procedures for worship to them reliably. With the current limitations on both capacity and spacing there is no way to safely handle a crowd of uncertain size. 

Instead, we will have a simple outdoor service at 5 pm, weather permitting. It will be short, and should end about sundown (5:40 that day). Details are still being worked on, but being outside both allows us to space out for as many people as come AND will allow for singing. We are working on details for music but I am looking forward to this new worship service. One good part is that by finishing around sundown, those who do not drive at night should have about 20 minutes to head home before it is fully dark. 

We will also have a service online, which will be pre-recorded so people can worship whenever it is most convenient. By pre-recording we can make the service have a more ‘polished’ look to it and ensure that the sound is as good as we can make it.   For those who want to be community online as we have been these last months, we will watch together on Zoom at the usual 7 pm worship time, and will have a few specific things happen during that time to interact and share Christmas greetings and stories. 

2020 has indeed been a year like no other, but we know that Christ has been present in it all. We will close it by watching for the coming of Christ, not only in the story of a manger long ago, but in the here and now.