There was life before Covid-19 and life after it.
I was recently reading an article, in which a professor of political science, with a wealth of experience of crises around the world, commented that after something as globally significant as Covid-19; many things will not be the same again.
This comment felt uncomfortable and yet had about it a profound truth. While we experience the strangeness and frustration of being shut in, unable to meet and relax with family and friends, unable to engage in the social interaction that is a part of life, we look forward to the day when all this will end and we can get back to normal.
Each year during Holy Week, Christians recall that for the first followers of Jesus, this was a period of mounting uncertainty. Jesus’ confrontational relationship with the Temple authorities was increasing. The conversations between Jesus and his friends were becoming more unsettling. There was a dread feeling that all this was leading to a dangerous climax, and so it did. On the day we call Good Friday, in the early hours, Jesus was arrested by the Temple guards and taken away to be interrogated. In the hours that followed Jesus was tortured and abused, and finally condemned to die and was crucified.
With these biblical events in mind, I wonder about the low points in our lives: when the people we love die, and the experience of bereavement and lose finds no comfort. The times we betray people, and in fear we desert those who need us. When we don’t have the answers, we are looking for. When we find ourselves confined and alone and everything is out of control – No light in our darkness and no hope for the future.
In the Christian calendar, the light of Easter is immensely significant, because it is inextricably linked to the darkness of Good Friday. To a group of frightened isolated people, who have locked themselves in a room, there comes a transforming revelation; they are not alone. Into their darkness comes the light of forgiveness and compassion, peace and grace, mercy and love. This Easter, whatever your understanding of the risen Jesus, what we find in him is the offer of something new. Not a return to the way things were, but rather the offer of new life and hope for the future.
Rev. Andy Bryer,
Methodist Minister.
