Lent, the Pandemic, and a Resurrection Hope
When I think back to this time a year ago, COVID19 was just starting to dominate water cooler conversations and news stories, but it was still something far away and alien. Pretty quickly, though, COVID19 became all too real, and my life, and the lives of everyone I know, turned upside down. We’ve lived with masks and without hugs for 11 months, and while there is some light at the end of the tunnel with the release of vaccines, it still looks like a long, dark tunnel. Snow and ice storms remind us that winter is still here, and if things couldn’t get more depressing, tomorrow marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is traditionally a time when we grapple with the reality of our own mortality — remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return, the Ash Wednesday liturgy we’ll hear tomorrow reminds us. It’s a bleak thought, even at the best of times. And today is not the best of times. Today feels like we’ve spent entirely too much time contemplating our own mortality. We are keenly and painfully aware of the presence of death in our world, and how delicate life is. The idea of dedicating six weeks to dwelling on our faults and our own mortality even further, may seem like more than we can bare. Except that this is a gross misunderstanding of what Lent is. In fact, Lent might be just what we need right now.
“Lent is a time for discipline, for confession, for honesty, not because God is mean or fault finding or finger pointing,” Anglican theologian N.T. Wright says, “but because He wants us to know the joy of being cleaned out, ready for the good things that He has in store.” Inherent in the observation of Lent is anticipation. It isn’t about dwelling in sorrow, but looking forward towards and preparing ourselves for joy. We recognize the fallen nature of our world, and of ourselves, but we don’t stop there. Lent instead is a time to anticipate wholeness, when even death itself shall be no more. What better metaphor for living in a time of Lent, recognizing the brokenness of existence while we long for a world restored, than living in a world marred by a seemingly omnipresent virus? What better time to remind ourselves that we are not bound to brokenness, but we are promised renewal?
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Recently I read N. T. Wright’s newest book, a slim, 75 page reflection titled “God and the Pandemic.” He asks the same questions that I have asked myself over the last year — how do I live as a person of faith in the middle of the greatest public health crisis the world has seen in 100 years? How can I believe and live in a resurrected life when everywhere I look I see the world groan in suffering, where I myself grieve? A key themed for Wright, both in “God and the Pandemic,” and his book “Surprised by Hope,” is the paradox that we both await the promise of resurrection and live into that promise here and now. I was thinking about that paradox a few days ago. My husband, Austin, and I were talking about that verse in Revelation, the one where there shall be no more death or mourning. Austin asked about the first half of the verse “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes…” How can God wipe away the tear from every eye if mourning shall be no more, he wondered? I thought about it and the more I thought, I realized the answer is twofold. As we live into the promise of resurrection while still living in a fallen world, we can trust that Christ is with us in all our suffering, wiping the tear from every eye. In the new creation, in the Resurrection, in a world completely restored, all tears will be wiped away forever, as death and sorrow and mourning are defeated — in that comfort, and in that healing work of Christ, we see the promise of Resurrection as we simultaneously experience it: “The sign of a new creation from the ministry of Jesus forward, has been the healing presence of Jesus himself, and his death and resurrection above all.” (N. T. Wright)
In “God and the Pandemic,” Wright reminds us of that reality, and how such knowledge informs our response to the pandemic. He doesn’t give us hard answers on whether churches should stay open or not, on if we should gather for fellowship or not, that is not his aim. Wright’s goal is to remind us that our response to the pandemic, as with all things, must be predicated on Christ and his ministry. The Gospels show us that the ministry of Christ was to preach and to heal, but I was most struck by Wright’s reminder that Christ went a step further. A major part of Christ’s ministry was to grieve with those who grieve, lament with those who are lamenting. Living in the hope of resurrection does not mean we cannot look at the death and anxiety of the last year and grieve for all that we lost. Instead, we are called, like Christ, to grieve for the world and our own lives. In our sorrow is the implicit desire for something more. Our core instincts tell us that we are not made for suffering, but for wholeness. We “hold the vision and reality side by side as we groan with the groaning of creation, and as the Spirit groans within us so that the new creation may come to birth.”
What better metaphor for the hope of resurrection than our longing for our world to be renewed and returned to life after the virus? In our hope for resurrection, we long for a world that is renewed, redeemed, resurrected. A world where “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.” The paradox of faith, of Lent, is that while we await the coming of Resurrection, God’s salvific work has already taken place. We are already redeemed, a new creation, even while we remain in a fallen world. And while we live in this fallen world, we can still grieve, just as Christ grieves with us. He has grieved at every bedside of someone struggling to breath, been with every ER nurse on cusp of a breakdown. At every funeral, I know Christ held the bereaved. This Lent, we grieve. But in that grief, we also hope.
As we grieve and hope, we also know that as a redeemed people, we are called to help usher in that new creation, as Christ did in His ministry. As Wright says in his book “The call to Jesus’ followers, then, as they confront their own doubts and those of the world through tears and from locked doors, is to be sign producers for God’s Kingdom.” In Lent, in this pandemic, we aren’t called to wallow in our faults. We are preparing ourselves so that we may not only partake in the promise of wholeness, but be actors heralding in the new creation. Living into the promise of resurrection, into that Easter promise, we can weep for the fallenness of our world, minister to God’s creation, and look ahead towards restoration, renewal, resurrection, in hope.
“Easter is not about immortality but about resurrection from a death that is a real death with all it’s frightfulness and horrors, resurrection from a death of the body and the soul, of a whole person, resurrection by the power of God’s mighty act. This is the Easter message.”
