Retelling the story of these events amid a Covid-19 lockdown

This has been a very strange Holy Week. It will be disconcerting to not be able to hold services at St. Georges tomorrow and on Sunday. It is also quite hard trying to write a theme about Easter when I am still trying to get my head around Good Friday.

This year we retell the story of these events amid a Covid-19 lockdown. And that might change how we experience that this year.

Some of us are experiencing the isolation and loneliness that Jesus lived as he walked to the cross. Others like many around the world are joining with him as he prays those famous words of Psalm 22 – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us!” Some are dying, some are sick, some are mourning those who died, and some live in fear of what will come next. Others are surveying the financial ruin of their lives. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us!”

This year the story of crucifixion holds much deeper meaning than ever before. We join with his disciples then and down the centuries who have seen all that gave shape and meaning to their lives at best disrupted, and maybe shattered. We do not know what the future holds. We grieve from what was and look with uncertainty to the future. We are living the Good Friday story.  As you live in this story, what do you notice about how you are responding. How does the story of crucifixion help or hinder your response?

Crucifixion and death is not the end. In “Love Wins” Rob Bell talks about how for the Prophets and Jesus heaven was not another place we go to after we die, but the hope of what this world will be like in next age, when God’s will is completely done on earth as in heaven. Easter Sunday is the day we celebrate Christ’s resurrection, his defeat of death and all that crushes life. It is about hope and life for us all. In all the resurrection stories the risen Jesus meets his grieving disciples in all their mix of emotions, starting with Mary and the other women. But the story does not stop there. The story goes on, and they are invited into that story

We too are met in all our mix of emotions at the time and the ways we are responding to what is happening in our world now. And we too are invited into the ongoing story.

To live in the hope of the resurrection involves asking what does resurrected life look like in a post Covid-19 world. How has the last few weeks changed our experience and perspective this year?

Bell suggests that living resurrection involves imagining what the world will look like in the coming age (with the help of what the prophets and Jesus taught) and living to bring that to reality now. What does that look like this year in all that we have and are yet to go through?