In the Christian tradition we are in the season of Easter. It is a time of new life, a time of resurrection, a time of celebrating that God’s love conquers all, even death. Sometimes we can get stuck in our thoughts, stuck in our ways, in our celebrations and we can miss some of the deeper meaning. Resurrection is about new life, not the same life continued.
The stories in the Bible that talk about Jesus’ resurrection all describe Jesus as being different. He is not the same human who was walking the Earth days before. In some of the stories the disciples don’t even recognize Jesus at first. This person who they have been learning from, travelling with, sharing meals and accommodation with. They don’t recognize him because something is different. The power of God’s love that enables the resurrection, doesn’t put things right back where they were. It is not time travel; things don’t go back to how they were. But along the same lines, God doesn’t allow for us, for time to be stuck in the dark places. It is one of the reasons I encourage people to not attend a Good Friday service if they can’t attend an Easter Sunday service. The love of God doesn’t leave us in the dark place.
In some ways I’ve been thinking about the pandemic in Easter-related ways. To use Easter as a metaphor I think right now we are in the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday in relation to the pandemic. We know there is going to be good news coming, but we can’t quite see it coming to fruition yet. It also seems that I need to keep reminding myself that when that good news comes it is going to come in the form of resurrection, not resuscitation. When we are able to be back to as close of normal as we were before the pandemic … things still will be different. The good news that we will receive is not going to be “well things are back to the way they were”. Just like the disciples experienced Jesus in a new way, so to are we going to continue to experience life in a new way. Things will always be different than they were before 2020. That also doesn’t have to be all a bad thing either. We have learned things about ourselves, about what is important to us as individuals, as society, that will have great impact on who we are moving forward. For some their use of technology has allowed for different ways of staying connected with others, when face to face isn’t possible.
New life springs forth all around us. Yes, some aspects might look the same, but there are differences, there are changes, there is growth.
Let us see these weeks, months and years ahead and try not to think about the days before the pandemic, but embrace this newness, embrace how we have grown and learned as a society as individuals and look to what it can lead us to in the future. I truly believe that God doesn’t leave us in a Good Friday space, God always gives us a chance at resurrection a chance at new life.