麻豆社

Today is usually one of my favourite days. Christians have been through Good Friday, where they recall the traumatic trial, crucifixion and death of Jesus. By Saturday, people are usually preparing their churches for Easter Sunday. The building is cleaned, the organist is trying out the music, candidates for baptism are getting ready for the Easter Vigil Service, the choir is rehearsing and the readers are practising. We know that Easter is coming; there is a buzz in the air.

But that enjoyment and excitement I usually feel are not there this year. The coronavirus means churches have closed. Some will have a solitary priest live streaming from his altar tomorrow morning. But the choirs, the readers, and the congregation won鈥檛 be there. It will be an Easter unlike any other we have known.

But because of that, we have more insight into what it was like for the first followers of Jesus after his death on the cross. They had no expectation of what was to happen next. They were not preparing for the happiness that was to come. They were experiencing confusion, doubt, fear, maybe even despair.
The nation is experiencing such emotions more than ever before. It can recall the past, when people had normality, when all the things that make life pleasurable could be taken for granted: meeting family and friends, going to the beach, playing sports. And for many there is now loneliness, grief for those who have died, fear as to what will happen to others in the future. Like the apostles who gathered together, they fret about what happens next.
In those readings for Easter that I mentioned earlier that people normally rehearse in churches across Britain this morning, there are accounts of how God led his people out of slavery to freedom. It was a physical Exodus to a promised land. The readings continue to eventually tell a story of a road that led not just to an actual land but a spiritual place of hope because Christ rose from the dead.

When you are in the halfway moment between Good Friday and Easter, as the apostles were, it is hard to believe that life can be transformed, that you can get through the time of waiting and anxiety. But if the Easter story offers a message this year to everyone, it is this: hope and goodness will prevail and this time shall pass.

Life will not be the same. But coming out the other side, it is possible to have learnt the most profound lessons and be able to start again, renewed and ready for the next stage with an ever stronger purpose.

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