May 17, 2020

Cate Thorn

Easter 6     John 14: 15-21

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Quite often when we introduce our speaking in church we refer to a date from the liturgical calendar. It can seem like a special code or something for anyone unfamiliar. The church has a calendar year, running alongside the regular one, populated and punctuated with events, framed around the birth, life and death of Jesus. Its imagery often matches nature’s seasons, at least as they occur in the Northern Hemisphere as well as the imagery, and energy of many already existing rituals from the life of the communities into which Christianity spread. Having lived with it for a while it seems to me the cycle of the liturgical season – with its seasons of celebration and lament, of reflection and ordinary time also maps the experience of life and living – the human landscape of life.

At the moment in the liturgical calendar we’re coming to the end of the season of Easter. The feast of the Ascension occurs this week, with gospel reading depicting Jesus withdrawing and being carried up to heaven. Ascensiontide then ensues until the feast of Pentecost on Sunday week. So today is the next to last Sunday in the season of Easter. An Easter season that began with gospel readings of resurrection appearances, then had imagery of Jesus as good shepherd, before speaking of the Father’s house of many dwelling places and Jesus as Way, truth and life.

Each of these Easter season narratives promise familiarity, care, reassurance of continuity in a way the disciples can grasp. They include disciples who are slow to comprehend, or maybe ones brave enough to say what everyone else was thinking. They include disciple disbelief and doubt. They include the need for solid, easy to understand, spelled out explanation. Last week Jesus was heard telling a bewildered Thomas he already knew the Way. Maybe because been living with Jesus had been the way – in their waking and walking, eating and drinking, laughing and weeping, arguing and reconciling, in their incredulity and unbelief at the unexplained taking place in ordinary life. Of course significant words were spoken, but maybe the way was known even more surely through the solid, walking together and with this Jesus. Known in their meeting Jesus who called them to know their unique, potent beautiful selves and gained them courage to express it. In experiencing Jesus insistent determination to live as he proclaimed, to speak plainly and bluntly at times, to name inequity, to live with enough. Known in Jesus’ raging at injustice, his weeping out of love and irresolute naming of power misused. In Jesus frustration and patience with overzealous disciples who walked doubtfully, trustingly, disbelievingly with him – enthusiastic yet uncomprehending a good deal of the time. The Way wasn't magically somewhere else. Perhaps more unbelievably it was with them, in them, where they were, with who they were, together.

Today’s gospel continues from last week, for reassurance sake, or as future promise Jesus now tells of the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, who is to come. Jesus will go from them, no longer be seen, but continuity will be known in the spirit who abides with, in, among them, as they love and keep Jesus commandment to love. Because we read retrospectively, or hear this through the filter of many years of interpretation and tradition, we doubtless hear this intimating Pentecost, the festival soon to come. Pentecost with its great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the sometimes named birth day of the church – it can be tempting to get exclusive again. As if the Holy Spirit, breathing life into creation, hadn't been there until now (at least not in this special way). But perhaps today is a reiteration, a reminder, a reassurance that Jesus stands in continuity in the flow of divine breathing life into being. Perhaps this small gathered Jewish community hears echo from their tradition, when the Shekinah took leave of the Temple. The remembered visceral experience of divine absence, yet also knowing it wasn’t the end. In time faithful community reformed, changed for and by context, simpler yet as served the needs for their time, place and context. Jesus will die, they will viscerally experience his absence, yet they will, in time, know continuity that will reform, reshape them for their place and time.

Reflecting on the disrupted lockdown times we’re living through there seem parallels with the season of the church year the lockdowns began in. Lockdown level 4 began in Lent, almost at the end of Lent. In a curious way Lockdown Level 4 was like an enforced Lent. For 5 weeks there was little we could do and it gave us time to reflect. Reflect on what was most important, required us to turn to those we found ourselves closely housed with and learn out how to live together. Perhaps uncomfortable truths about relationships were revealed – that they didn’t match our ideals. It hasn’t been easy yet it has been possible. The ripple effect of this time will be played out in the days, years, decades to come and not just in fiscally.

As we transition through Level 3, post Lent, post Easter, we emerge into what may now feel a very uncertain world and discover we’re different somehow. Some of us emerge with a greater awareness of what is important and what can be lived without. Others of us face the stark reality of relationships disrupted or of life without work. For some of us it’s something we’ve never known – life that’s been a particular way is so disrupted we’ve no familiar signposts, or life road markers to negotiate life and this unknown, frightening landscape is overwhelming. And others of us will have to return to life on the streets as winter sets in. Some of us can resume daily pursuits, if in modified form yet many of us are still shut away.

Hidden for so long, fearful behind our locked doors, as we emerge perhaps we’re looking for signs of normalcy to break in and reassure. Like those post Easter resurrection appearances that broke into the reshaped, remade world of the disciples. But they're fleeting, heart-warming in the moment, yet equally bewildering because they don't quite fit us or our changed world anymore. And so we begin to talk together about embracing this change and the opportunities opened up by this break with usual. Like minded interest groups are gathering and activating this way. It can be tempting for this to become more about particular causes than for a greater good. Having been so closely guarded, we might need reminding of the need to lift our eyes beyond the parapet our isolation has created.

As we tentatively move to Level 2 we become even more reliant on the cooperation of one another. Ascension this week marks the time the disciples discovered, experienced together an absence of guiding presence, of being left to depend on their mutual resourcefulness. They chose to take time to pray together, to trust themselves to the rhythm and ritual of prayerful presence in the place of faith known to them. Maybe it was a way of processing, integrating, giving time for their experience to change them, for them to learn the language in body and word they needed, or the world needed from the gift given them.

We’ve experienced a rift in the world, with Covid-19. The response in most parts of the Western world has been to shut down, to flatten the curve so not overwhelm medical resources. The closed door syndrome when we're afraid is normal and probably necessary for a time. But it isn't real. We’re globally interconnected, it’s vital to be aware beyond our parapet. As Arundhati Roy, writes from India, “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” [1]

Maybe we can allow Ascensiontide wisdom to speak to us. We need time to still ourselves, to step into rhythms and rituals that call us back to ourselves, remind us of what’s most important. We need time to process, to integrate our experience and be changed by it so we act in new ways for the life of the world.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca