I’ve heard it a lot and perhaps you have too, people saying “when we’re back to normal?”
Why would we want to go back to normal? Who would benefit from that ‘normal’? Would people benefit more from not going back to normal? What even was it that you liked about normal?
Holy Week invites us to prepare for the cross, to journey to the cross. Often we put this in the context of saying we need to travel with Jesus, bearing the weight of the cross, entering his pain. What if we, this Holy Week, entered that time of suffering to prepare for our own re-birth in a brand new way? What if we were prepared to travel with Jesus but in doing so, feel our own discomfort as well as his, not on behalf of him, but for him.
Most birthing is not comfortable or easy. That’s largely because we don’t find any change easy. But, ahead of this particular Easter Sunday, leading up to it, we can be travelling our own personal journeys asking what we need to birth anew, what do we need to leave at the foot of the cross? What do we know, or not yet know, that should never ‘go back to normal?’
One colleague I’ve spoken to referred to the amazing opportunities we have had, to share the Gospel during this crisis. As many have affirmed elsewhere, God doesn’t choose for us to suffer, but he gives us good things out of our suffering. He makes everything new, as he does and will on Easter Sunday.
As we go through this week let’s notice how we journey differently without the ways of formal religion. What part of not going back to normal is that leading us into?
There are many people for whom Psalm 23 speaks powerfully and I pray for them daily; for those who desperately need the ‘quiet waters’ and refreshment from our loving and merciful God – those who have lost loved ones, for those working on the front line. For some of us though I think we are called to enter a Holy Week that is an uncomfortable preparation for our own rebirth and for that of our communities. The two groups have at least one thing in common – the need for courage.
It will take a strong will, but isn’t that what was required of Jesus, as he was preparing to fulfil his Father’s work? What work does God want to fix our eyes on that we are not yet fixed on?
I think that we are at a pivotal moment where the world is waiting for us to pray, with fresh courage, and enter into a transformational time with the God who puts flesh on dry bones and who moulds us into his likeness. We need to be willing for the potter to form us and, as most of us know, formation can be uncomfortable. We will, naturally, also need great courage to be willing to go forward with change.
But this isn’t a comfortable season, globally, communally or individually. I feel like this is the moment when we could offer ourselves as true partners in the new. Are you ready to pray what that new normal could look like, for you, for your family, for wider society and for the Church?
What Jesus does for us, culminating in the Cross, is not normal! It is breath-taking and painful, and yet heralds the biggest invitation to freedom that the world has seen.
What are you going to pray for this Holy Week? What new life and new beginnings are just waiting for us? Where is God wanting us to form things newly, away from anything that we have called ‘normal’?
Exam results; pressures of work; the weather; illness instead of that lovely planned holiday (me over Christmas and New Year); we’ve probably all experienced disappointments during our lives. Some will be much more draining and go deeper than others. Sadly, some of our disappointments can leave their mark and effect our behavior for a long time.
What if... 