Look to the healers

These are incredible days filled with darkness and with light, with hope and despair, with predictability and surprise. They are days in which we can, in one moment, take hold of our professional competence and, in the next, realise that nothing could have prepared us for ministry in such times and that there is nothing in our metaphorical toolkit that will see us through. And, in this season after Easter, it’s possible that we can identify with the roller coaster on which the disciples seem to ride - those heady days of occasionally glimpsing hope and joy and those plummeting days of recognising that still they could not comprehend. Those restorative moments when it seemed they had a place in the mission of God and the arresting times when they went into processing overload and had no idea which piece of string to attempt to unravel first.
We see it in all the different ways our colleagues react - from those who gleefully put into practice their technology expertise or who enable the folk who can, to those who are paralysed by observing the Herculean efforts of others. We witness those who are nimble and adaptive alongside those who are more sluggish and reactive. We are in awe of those with energy to implement a dozen new ideas before breakfast and empathise with those who simply don’t know where to start or what to tackle first, whose elephant simply won’t be decent enough to divide into bite sized pieces that they might tackle. And, of course, some of us are even managing to be all of these caricatures in any given moment or day.
When all our normal defences, the apparatus of our work, is taken from us, as it has been, to what do we resort?
Richard Holloway very helpfully describes something of the confusion that was embraced 40 years ago when AIDS was emerging as a global challenge, describing how it brought out the best and the worst in folks and exhorts us, in the words of Camus to “strive to be healers”.
It may not be within our gift is to determine, how our communities of faith and the communities we serve will emerge from this pandemic. We are, however, in a position to model love and vulnerability, exploration and commitment. We can share our wondering and our uncertainties as well as our faith in a God who majors in resurrection.
None of us would have chosen this way of cultural renewal and it is not simply opportunistic to recognise that, in time, we might emerge with wisdom and strength, with greater faith and hope. However, that is not, for now, our focus. Our task is not yet to attempt to make sense, to establish a new normal or to attempt to tidy things up. Rather, in the midst of trauma, while clinging precariously to the roller coaster ride of these days we could do much worse than “strive our utmost to be healers”.

Glimpsing resurrection

Matthew 27:61
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

I’ve always been intrigued by the tenacity of the two Marys who sat by the tomb. Why didn’t they simply leave when it seemed clear they could do no more? They had endured a long night and day, accompanying Jesus through all the horrific events that led to his death - the trials, the procession, the crucifixion, the final cry. They witnessed his body being removed and laid in a tomb. And still they waited and returned early after Sabbath. And their reward? Was to witness resurrection firsthand.
On so many levels it makes sense that to witness resurrection we have to stay close to the tomb. Yet often we are busy looking for the next new thing, rushing on from the place of death to work out what we should do next. Indeed we are encouraged not to allow our thoughts to linger on what has been lost but on what has been found. It is counterintuitive to sit with death. Especially in a church anxious for survival, eager to move on to restoration.
Perhaps faith and praxis has to be much more counterintuitive. Perhaps when every other area of our lives is crying out for life to return to whatever a new normal might look like, after this pandemic, even though we know we will be irrevocably changed, perhaps there is a call for people of faith to be slower. Partly because we are often the ones called to minister and accompany people through death and mourning. But also because we want to wait on God to show us the way of resurrection today. We’ve always claimed that we are about discerning the mission of God, about letting God direct our paths. That discernment is going to be critical as we emerge from this time of global trauma and crisis. A quick fix is neither desirable nor sustainable. Rather, attuning our hearts to the “slow work of God” as Teilhard de Chardin puts it will be vital for finding a way through. Yes the rate of change, the rate at which we we’ve had to respond to adaptive challenge has accelerated but we are still called to accompany folk through transition, to care for hearts and minds and to nurture souls. To do that, we must attend to our own souls. That’s why we must be prepared to linger by the tomb - so that we might see for ourselves those discarded grave clothes that symbolise those things by which we no longer need to be held and point to the new beginnings that are possible. Only once we have watched and waited and glimpsed resurrection will we be commissioned as the women were on Easter morning : “Go Quickly and tell the good news.”