%20copy.jpg)
Even a few months ago, who could have imagined that the world would change so quickly and so much by (almost) everyone staying at home. Dramatic, world-changing events like a pandemic are traumatic. This is a hard thing to live through, and the difficulty will last. When the world finally re-opens, everything will not go back to normal. At the very least the collective memory of trauma will endure.
In times like these there are, however, opportunities that present themselves, opportunities to achieve significant change in areas in which the old "normal" is no longer preferred. The perils and pitfalls inherent in systems such as those which comprise our social safety net are laid bare when such a large percentage of the population comes to rely on them. The recognition that we can do better is introduced to the reality that we must do better, and if we can maintain uncomfortable focus long enough, if we refrain from turning away, maybe, just maybe, we will do better.
What is true in society is also true in the church.
For more than a month now, in Ontario at least, we have not been able to gather together in our buildings to worship in the personal presence of one another. We have not been able to pass the plate and collect an offering in the personal presence of one another. Pre-recorded has, in some cases, replaced in-the-moment, for sermons and songs and prayers and the reading of scripture. We have, however successfully, cobbled together some semblance of a new normal. There has been something else going on as well.
The body of Christ has been confronted by its idols these past many weeks. Church buildings, professional clergy, concert quality performances are the big ones. Less noticeable but every bit as present are the thousand different ways we have always done things. Nothing is as usual. Much of it has been uncomfortable. We feel like maybe we are having to settle for less. And we wonder if what we have had to let go of will be back, averting our eyes from the question of whether they should come back.
So many questions, so much to consider. If we attempt to avoid or forget at soon as restrictions are listed, we will have learned nothing, gained nothing from this time. Worse yet, we will have entrenched ourselves in an unsustainable system. If we are willing to look, long and hard, at what we have professed to believe, and how we have responded to our changed reality in the present, we might recognize that we are at a liminal moment. We cannot go back yet, even if we wanted to. And we cannot go forward yet, no matter how much we desire it. A perfectly in between moment where possibilities are endless, and we have some time to think and converse and reflect on what might be.
A moment in this time to re-articulate our faith. A moment in this time to re-orient our practice. A moment to corporately and prayerfully imagine before God what the body of Christ might become in the new day that seems so very far away but is most assuredly coming.