Today, we begin our sermon series with Francie Taylor and Mario Alberico. Mario has been a member of this church for many years serving as a teacher in confirmation, an elder on Session and helping to produce the art show we put on several years ago. Francie is a more recent member, but she has been teaching yoga classes here at church for a number of months. Let’s hear what they have to say.

Now I love what both Mario and Francie had to say about how the pandemic changed their lives for the better. We’re going to talk more about what they said in a little bit, but I have heard stories from a number of people who used the pandemic as an opportunity to improve themselves. They have decided to eat healthier, take up exercising, meditation, prayer, journaling, indulging their creative talents like writing or hobbies like candle making or wood crafting.

For some, this pandemic has been an opportunity to completely reset their lives. They started going to counseling or working on themselves internally. They were going in one direction and then they took the pandemic as an opportunity to turn a corner and go in a completely different direction. Now, I was definitely not one of those people, so I began wondering: why did some of us find our stride in the pandemic, while others were either just surviving, or worse, self-destructing?

Well, I did some research and what I discovered is that part of the reason why some people are faring better is because the normal pace of life has been greatly disrupted. As we heard Francie talk about, many people were moving at such a high velocity that, once the lockdown measures were imposed, they no longer had the same commitments and had the room, for the first time in a long time, to actually think about things other than moving from one commitment to the next.

Now what’s interesting about being given the gift of time to think about your life is that reflecting on your life can be scary thing. That’s one of the reasons why so many of us like the high paced lifestyle of moving from one thing to the next. It prevents us from having the time to reflect on our lives. We do that intentionally because we fear that if we look deep inside of ourselves, we might not like what we see. For some people, when they took the time to reflect and their lives were not what they wanted it to be, it caused them to become depressed, which is what drove a lot of negative behaviors during the pandemic.

But what happened with Francie is that, as she started reflecting, she felt motivated to change. She was working long hours and feeling completely drained and worn out by her job. She didn’t want her life to go back to the way that it had been before the pandemic, so she took very specific actions to change the direction of her life. She decided to switch jobs by getting her certification to teach yoga. And as you heard her say, yoga wasn’t just about changing careers. Yoga helped Francie to rediscover who she was and to become a different, more caring person.

Another bright side to the pandemic is what you heard Mario talk about during his interview. All of sudden, because of the lock down measures, everyone was living the way he normally lived. Because of Mario’s health, he spends most of his time sequestered in his home and, for the first time in a long time, he was not the odd man out. As a result, the pandemic really opened up a whole new world for him.

As Mario talked about, he’s an artist, but because of his disability, he lacked the capability to go to art conferences and network with other artists. I found it so striking how, prior to the pandemic, if he wanted to participate in a conference, it would have been odd and awkward for him join in via Zoom or Facetime. But with the pandemic, all of a sudden, everyone was on Zoom and, as a result, there was no difference between him and everyone else.

In this way, I think the pandemic did something very unexpected for all of us. On the one hand, I think it helped us to understand how the people on the margins of society, those with physical and intellectual disabilities, have to live all the time. Now, we can more easily put ourselves in their shoes and realize how our high paced society just ends up leaving a lot of people behind. More importantly, we can take measures to not let that happen in the future so that more people can be included.

On the other hand, I think the pandemic has given voice to a number people who would not normally have a voice. For Mario, his voice was muffled 10 years ago when his health took a turn for the worse as a result of the cancer treatments he received when he was a teenager. But the pandemic gave Mario the opportunity to have his voice heard as an elder on Session. He was critical in being able to change the trajectory of this church and, without Zoom, those efforts would have been impossible.

In my mind, Francie and Mario’s stories exemplify for me one of the best concepts of Stewardship—making lemonade out of lemons. You find yourself in a difficult situation, but you turn that around and use that difficulty to your advantage. In our scripture from Matthew, Jesus finds himself with 4,000 people out in the middle of nowhere. The people have been listening to him speak for hours, but they are now hungry and have no food.

Jesus turns the situation around by performing a miracle: he takes a meager amount of food and multiplies it into an abundance of food. Now there are two different ways you can interpreting this miracle. The most common is to read the story literally. Jesus, using magical powers, multiplied the food. However, I was introduced to another way of interpreting this story from the movie Millions.

I think this interpretation (although it removes the magical elements from the story) is really the better interpretation. The idea is that a number of people already had food and were guarding it closely because they were out in the middle of nowhere and were not sure when they would get back to civilization. The situation was such that they were only looking out for themselves, but what Jesus helped them to do was to let down their guard and to share what they already had.

To me, this feels very parallel to the pandemic. We found ourselves in a difficult situation and our initial inclination was to keep ourselves safe. But Jesus encourages us to share what we already have for the benefit of others who are suffering. In this way, Jesus wants us to make lemonade out of lemons. He wants us to see the bright side of bad situation.

Indeed, this is the premise we find in Matthew’s parable of the talents. God gives us talents and expects us to use them for the benefit of others. However, when we find ourselves in a difficult situation, like the pandemic, we end up burying our talents in the ground and not using them. We say, “Now is not the right time. I just need to protect myself until the storm passes.”

However, the point of this parable is that God wants us to take the talents we have and use them, regardless of the situation. That’s what Mario and Francie did and that’s what Jesus asks of all of us as Christians—no matter how daunting the circumstances, God always has an expectation that we will look to the bright side and use our talents for the creation of God’s kingdom, even in the midst of a global pandemic.

Many of you have done exactly that with your resources. You have not buried them in the ground, but have given freely to make sure this church has what it needs to serve the needy, pay the staff and keep the lights on. During the pandemic, we continued to help people who were struggling financially by helping them to pay late bills, rent or buy groceries. We realized there was an opportunity for us to reach a wider audience by expanding our digital footprint and putting out a lot more material online.

Moreover, we ran a capital campaign to upgrade our facilities to make it more accessible. When I applied for this job in 2013, I read your mission study. The number one most cited issue with this church was how inaccessible the facilities are to those who have trouble walking. Thanks to you, we’re now in the process of addressing that issue. Thankfully, even though our giving was down this past year, we kept our expenses in line and so we came out ahead in terms of our budget.

All of these things are real positives that came out of a really difficult situation. This is why our stewardship campaign is called Back to the Bright Side: Renewing Our Commitment to God. Although we are still not operating at full capacity because of the pandemic, we’re trying to make the best out of our circumstances. We’re trying to make lemonade out of lemons. You may remember that, prior to our kick-off in September, we sent out a brochure outlining all the events and activities we had planned for the fall. We created Service Saturdays as an opportunity for you to give back to the community.

We did all this because we wanted to inspire you to become recommitted to making church an active part of your life again and now we need you to renew your commitment to our community through your financial giving. As we’ve been trying to do more, our expenses have risen and we want to make sure that we can keep up the positive momentum going forward. Therefore, if you can afford to give what you’ve been giving, please do so.

I haven’t asked you all to increase your giving in several years because of the pandemic, but if you can afford to give a little more, even if it’s a few hundred dollars, that can make a huge difference. As you know, everything has gotten more expensive and there will be some people whose financial circumstances may change as the pandemic continues to unfold.

But I know some of you are sitting there saying, “I’m new and I didn’t give anything last year. What should my commitment look like?” I’m glad you asked. If you’ve never made a commitment before and need a benchmark of what to contribute to the church, a great starting point is $40 a week. That comes out to $2080 for the year for an individual and $4,160 for a couple. Of course, if you can give more, every dollar helps.

If that sounds like a lot of money and you’re wondering, “Easy for you to say, Alex, but do you actually give that much money yourself?” I will tell you that I do and that I would never ask you to do something I am not doing myself. For some of you, I know $40 a week is not easy, but if you can get to that level or even exceed it, then it will make a huge difference in our ability to continue to be the Bright Side for those right here in Arlington Heights.

Next week is Commitment Sunday, when you will be asked to write down on your commitment card what you plan to give to the church in 2022. Please prayerfully consider how your commitment to First Pres will make a tangible difference in sustaining our congregation as we make our way through the pandemic. If you can’t be here, make sure you mail it in or fill out your commitment online on our website: https://firstpresah.org/contribute/pledge/ Thank you for being a part of building God’s kingdom by helping us get back to the Bright Side! Amen.