Anyone else struggling a bit in these bizarre times and in these days between Christmas and New Year?
We face uncertain times. And we are all weary. For the first time ever on Christmas Day I didn’t fall asleep. The load in Advent this year was different. Less rushing around but more intensive work producing zoom reflections and you tube quiet days and trying to visit people on the doorstep and producing what I wanted to be meaningful worship for those who wanted in the season to be in a church building for it. I struggled with worship in a building over Christmas if I am honest. A carol service where we couldn’t sing them; the lowest number I’ve ever led worship for Christmas morning; trying a communion service which I didn’t find at all spiritual... For me Christmas in church was saved by sharing in a midnight communion in Boroughbridge and preaching on the greatest passage in the Bible - the prologue to John’s Gospel.
So what’s the weariness? I think we are weary of this pandemic! That’s all. We’ve now had nine months of it. When we were locked down in March, it was spring. We did those jobs we had put off for ages, we watched those box sets we’d never got round to watching, we enjoyed our gardens, we rang people up, I started writing my book, I enjoyed a long daily walk, I discovered putting a reflection on line weekly helped people. We valued people we previously took for granted who we suddenly had to rely on - the Sainsbury’s delivery man and the lay worker in the Circuit who fetched our medicine from the surgery. We clapped NHS workers, we had VE Day parties in the garden, we were promised this would be over by Christmas...
We were locked down again in November. That one was only a month but it was harder. We’d been out and about, the cases were falling, the government told us to shop, eat out, as long as we took care. So being back indoors was hard. It has been hard for me to begin a new Circuit appointment in September getting to know eight churches in a crazy time but I’ve done my best to at least form some relationships in each place and be positive but planning long term stuff has been impossible. We’ve done Christmas but it’s been very strange.
And now, well... we face 2021.
There is hope. Some of our folk here have had their first vaccine dose. That’s good to hear. It will take some time before we are all done though, but there is hope!
But there is also danger. Danger that we have in our weariness become complacent, breaking rules (I heard singing in church on Sunday and people are chatting in the building - naughty) and just being so fed up with it now. I’m tired of face coverings. I’m not enjoying “going to church” but I understand those who need to do that especially those who can’t Zoom etc.
And today I’ve heard of someone who went for a test and luckily the test came back negative but the person was in church on Christmas morning so had it come back positive, the whole congregation would have had to self isolate. Today we have reached 50,000 cases in a day in this countryand we have over 70,000 deaths which is nothing short of a scandal. Tomorrow the rather exhausted looking Matt Hancock, who always looks like he’s looking like a rabbit caught in headlights when addressing the nation, will surely tell us we are going up a tier. Or even two! How can we not, with cases rising, hospitals in London becoming overwhelmed, and some thinking schools need to remain shut in January as the teenage age group seem to be the current mass spreaders.
I struggle with the fact the government and even Methodist HQ say we can carry on opening churches in the higher tiers - surely if we can’t mix anywhere else we shouldn’t be encouraging that in churches should we?
It’s clear we are heading for a difficult start to 2021. Pastorally people will need support just keeping going. All of us will need that support.
So how do we enter a New Year?
Well, two ideas.
First, we hold on and keep going. When we know how the land lies tomorrow we look after each other, do nice things for our well-being, like a walk or reading a good book, we follow the rules. We sacrifice doing what we want for now so the future we want can come earlier. Cases need to come down urgently. We admit when we struggle - it’s okay to feel overwhelmed some days. I’ve done a lot of doorstep visits these past weeks. I hope they can continue. But if not I’ll be on the phone to folk.
And second, we try and remember the story we have just celebrated in the uncertainty we have to live through. I was thinking about this as I went for a walk round the city this afternoon. Pictures through this blog. The lights in the cathedral reminded me of the heart of the Christmas story: the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not. And will not! The colours of the sky this afternoon were a reminder that even in the drabness of life, if we look for the bright things they are there. There’s a prayer I find helpful thanking God for the bright and glorious things of life and asking him to help us count them and remember them. What do we hold on to in weariness spiritually?
The Christmas story is one of hope amidst despair and light in the darkness and divine answer in a world of questions. The story is set in chaos, myrrh is part of it, genocide is part of it, fear is part of it, it’s not pretty and straightforward - it comes to a weary world. And so we keep the faith, we keep doing what we are doing, we rehearse the story every say, we remember that incarnation becomes real especially on struggling days when we seek God and ask him to remind us of his ways.
I found when reading the daily C of E devotions on line for the Christmas season that yesterday a verse we leave out from It came upon a midnight clear was included. The verse really spoke to me this afternoon:
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow:
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing.
Perhaps at the end of what has been an awful year really, we feel on a climbing way and we walk it with painful steps slowly. When I was really unwell two years ago now and I couldn’t walk very far, I began to walk to the pond in Hailsham from our front door. At first every step was painful as my lungs ached. Today I walked for 55 minutes happily and briskly. Today a journey can feel a climb.
What the hymn reminds us is that even on the climbing way, even in the worsening of the pandemic, even with New Year celebrations restricted, even with deep worries and fears, we need to look for glad and golden hours. We need to breathe and take time and in that resting time on the way, listen for the angels singing. The whole point of angel intervention in the story is that they come not when life is alright, they come when life is pretty crap. When the time was right God broke into this world. He can do it again. We are all open to something better coming. We listen and we wait. It might take time, but he who is coming will come...
So I’ve been really honest today. I’m unsure about so much. But my faith keeps me afloat and I’m determined the churches I am trying to serve will put pastoral care and time for people this coming year at their heart. People need reassurance. There is a lot of soul search in going on which the Church needs to be part of. We cannot just return when it’s all safe to just what was.
After all, doesn’t Christ come to give us a second birth?
Answers on a postcard!
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