I’m intending to write a sermon for every Sunday while we cannot meet in a church building for worship. I hope while shielding for however long that is to provide some reflections on the lectionary passages for each week in the hope they might be helpful. Here’s the view from where I’m writing, above.
The idea will be you read the passages I am reflecting on, then sit in silence for a while, then ask yourself before you read my rambling what words in the passages speak to you, and what might God be saying to us all where we find ourselves. Enjoy!
The passages for this reflection are Psalm 130 and John 11: 1 - 45.
Life in this country has changed for us all dramatically since we’ve all been told we must stay inside as this coronavirus spreads. The Prime Minister has started to use several mantras over the last few days I have noticed. He’s writing a letter to us this week to remind us of them.
“This government has wrapped its arms around every working person like no government before.”
“We will beat this!”
“Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.”
While watching the nightly Downing Street press conferences is serious stuff, it’s also fun to count how many times these phrases have been trotted out by the Prime Minister and now by other cabinet ministers as he self isolates having himself been tested as positive. You wonder whether the more the mantras are shared, the more those leading us through this crisis hope they will go into our heads and we will live believing them.
The Gospel story for this Sunday brings Jesus into the heart of raw human experience. He shares a mantra about his presence and his message into the situation he finds himself in. The story is about death and it is about the promise of new life out of death. The story is about trust when you haven’t got much to trust especially when you don’t see any end to what you find yourself facing. We will come to that divine mantra later.
Jesus finds himself back in Bethany with his friends Mary and Martha. Their brother, Lazarus, has died. It’s a long story. Read it slowly. I am merely in this reflection looking at three points. There are loads of sermons you could preach on these forty five verses!
First, when we are in a bad place, it’s okay to name it. Martha is overcome with grief that her brother has died. Part of the grief process is anger, and Martha is angry...
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Life can be full of ifs and if only’s...
If only you had come...
If only I hadn’t said that...
If only I hadn’t made that decision...
If only people had been kinder...
If only I’d tried harder...
If only I didn’t have to stay indoors for ever...
If only things right now, were different...
If only I could get a supermarket delivery slot...
If only she hadn’t left me...
If only he hadn’t died...
Bereavement is a horrible thing to get through. It eats at you, rocks your world and you wonder how you can move forward, because you miss the person who has died, or the relationship that has ended, or the job you have suddenly lost means you don’t know how you are going to make ends meet, or the sudden illness you get means you cannot do what you used to do.
Maybe we need to see this enforced staying in as bereavement. Our normal way of life has gone. We are trying to say it’s okay not to go out, but I’m struggling today. It’s only the first week of lockdown. We could be doing this for ages. My wife is walking round like a caged animal saying she is bored as I sit and write this! We are beginning to get cabin fever and watching too much rubbish television! I sat and watched one of the most dreadful films ever last night until about 2am in the morning. I stayed to the end to see if it improved. It didn’t! There is also a major bereavement we cannot meet together for worship, although I’m grateful to lovely clergy people who are providing worship virtually at the moment, but for many of our folk modern technology isn’t part of their life. And I’m missing having a congregation to keep in touch with and help, still being without appointment.
The first message I want to share from this account of the death of Lazarus. It’s quite alright to say we are struggling, we aren’t coping, we are angry, we are frightened, we are weeping, and we don’t know what the future holds. Martha didn’t say “if only you’d been here” to Jesus, but “if you had been here!” He gets it from her with both barrels. Sometimes in pastoral leadership we will get our people’s raw emotion.
But Jesus also gets it that it is alright to admit you aren’t coping. In this story, we have the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” His friend has died. How comforting to know Jesus cries at what is going on around him. He is never remote from us. I love the prayer in the United Reformed Church prayer book for this Sunday:
What does the Lazarus story say at a time of fear, isolation and uncertainty?
I am frightened. This thing isn’t going to end quickly. We may need to self isolate for months yet. We don’t know. We need to connect with others however we can, to share how we are feeling and build each other up when we struggle.
We need to admit when we have days we can’t cope with this lockdown or we have information overload. We need to pray for healing and for peace for those who are unwell, and fear getting unwell and for those who lose loved ones so cruelly. They give out figures of the dead every day. Every one is a person and now every situation I suggest has a Martha in it and a community bewildered full of “if only’s” in it.
But we also need to do two things:
We need to celebrate life in the midst of it. The amazing servant ministry of those in the NHS and other public servants, taking great risks, will never be forgotten. Communities are coming together, help is being given to the vulnerable, social media, on line connections and the radio are all being superb. The folk next door who own our holiday let are being really kind. I’m appreciating chats on line with friends I haven’t spoken to at length for ages, I’m appreciating appreciative encouraging notes telling me to keep writing, I have some chapter titles for my book (at last!) and I’ve made a first enquiry about something that might be a bit exciting on a next sabbatical whenever that is allowed. We need to look for life in the small things: today a squirrel running up the trees outside! We need to hold on. What is today will not be tomorrow.
This story was passed to me this week in a blog. The story was told to the writer by a minister who served in the Channel Islands.
“Guernsey fell to Nazi occupation in World War II. The last hymn sung in one particular church before the occupation began – and therefore the last hymn sung in that church for almost 5 years – was the beloved hymn by Joseph Hart:
“This, this is the God we adore,
Our faithful, unchangeable friend,
Whose love is as great as His power,
And neither knows measure nor end.
“’Tis Jesus, the first and the last,
Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home;
We’ll praise Him for all that is past,
And trust him for all that’s to come.”
The equally moving sequel to the story was that, when the church was liberated at the end of the war and people went back inside the church for the first time in years - they discovered that the numbers were still on the hymn board - they had not been taken down. It meant that, with even greater joy at their liberation, the first service of their return began with the hymn they had sung at their closure: “This, this is the God we adore!”
I am the resurrection and the life...
Then we need to remember the heart of our faith. That resurrection follows crucifixion. We are an Easter people. We go into the depths, we wait and we rise in glory. I’m reading a lot of guff on line about praying all this away, and this being of Satan, and it being Gods punishment for our sin. It is easy to give unacceptable answers to people to what is going on at the moment. It isn’t easy to wait and have faith but my testimony is that God in Jesus comes unto the waiting and will be faithful. There will be new life —- and the Church will be different because of this time. And if we cannot cope today, well, find some fun. Click on these links sent to me: one is a professional musician playing Pachelbel’s Canon on a rubber chicken, and the other is Sooty and Sweep singing along to Ten Green Bottles!!!
The Church of Scotland starters for worship website has this helpful paragraph:
“How do we cope with waiting; with leaving space for God, with being expectant, even when there are little or no signs of God? Do we trust in the promises that God will forgive; that God’s steadfast love lasts for ever?”
We listen for the government mantras and we follow them however hard. But more importantly we remember the nature of him we follow: I am the resurrection and life. Let us be angry, let us weep, let us be numb, and from those places watch him bid us come out of our tombs and go forth into life again — even if we have to stay indoors for now. And if all we can do is pray out of the depths, well, that’s absolutely fine.
(My temporary writing place: complete with Elgood’s plum porter!)
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