Sermon for 24.05.20 – The Disciples in Lockdown

by The Revd Preb. Marjorie Bown

It’s been two months now. Perhaps, like me, you find that the days are flying by because they are all so much the same. Someone observed that March felt like the longest month in history, with something new almost every day. But April and May have been extremely quiet, and now unbelievably it’s nearly June.

Has it been hard or has it been easy? Many people I’ve spoken to find that it’s a bit of both. 

The spring weather has been lovely. We may have enjoyed not commuting, not going to meetings in person, not being in busy and loud spaces. Perhaps we have honed our gardening or cooking skills. Some of us have been exercising more than usual and feel better for it. For many, it has been a time of appreciating the company of our family. Perhaps we have talked more to each other, eaten more meals together, played some games we don’t usually have time for.

For many others, of course, this has been a lonely and anxious time, and we have missed seeing our friends and loved ones. It has been frustrating to be confined at home. We may have had real concerns about our health. Or perhaps we are caring for a vulnerable person, trying to home-school our children, or managing a busy job remotely, and have found the lockdown pretty exhausting. Lots of people remark that they have been sleeping badly.

Whether it’s a pleasant time, or whether it is tiring and frustrating, we all have one thing in common. We don’t know when it is going to end. None of us can make any firm plans for June, or the rest of the summer, or even the autumn. We don’t know if Christmas will have any semblance of normality. Many activities may not start up again until the summer of 2021.

We don’t know if there will be a vaccine, or a second spike in infections, or if the virus will simply fade away. So for now, and for the foreseeable future, we are simply waiting. And that is hard in itself.

We like to be agents, to plan our lives, to be in control of our timetable. Whether it’s a holiday or a house move or just a social visit or a trip to the theatre, we want to be able to fill up our diary for ourselves.

This experience of helplessness, of not being able to plan, is deeply uncomfortable for most of us. We don’t like being passive – it may remind us of childhood with its lack of autonomy. The very word “passive” is linked of course to being a patient – and who enjoys that? It is also the root of the Passion of Christ, the time when Jesus surrendered himself to the worst that human beings could do to him. He said and did very little, but allowed himself to be mocked, tortured and crucified.

We are nearing the end of Eastertide, when we remember how the Passion of Christ was transformed into the mysterious re-appearance of the Lord to his followers. He came to them still bearing his wounds but now glorified, risen to a life that knows no end. And he told them to wait, because after he withdrew from their sight he promised to send them the Holy Spirit.

This ten-day period between Ascension Day and Pentecost is a time of waiting. Luke, writing the book of Acts, tells us quite specifically about what happened. Jesus’ friends gathered in that upper room in Jerusalem, the same place where they had shared the last supper with the Lord and where he had appeared to them despite the locked doors on Easter Sunday. Luke tells us who was in this temporary lockdown: he names the eleven disciples, because of course now Judas was missing, and he mentions that Jesus’ mother and brothers were present, and other women too who are not named. We can safely assume that Mary Magdalene and the other early visitors to the tomb were among them. So perhaps up to twenty people or so were gathered in prayer and expectation.

What did they imagine would happen next? I assume that they simply had no idea. We know from the gospels that they weren’t very quick at understanding what Jesus had to tell them. He had to say things very clearly, over and over again, and it’s clear from some of the reported dialogue that he occasionally became exasperated by their slowness to believe.

So I am picturing a room of people, probably not very socially distanced, who were doing their best to keep up. They had abandoned Jesus in his hour of need, apart from the women and John. After his certain death and burial they had a series of strange encounters with the Lord, though they were slow to recognize him in almost every instance. Then he had withdrawn from sight completely, promising that a helper would be sent to them.

As the festival of Shavuot or Pentecost approached, they would be bewildered as to what might happen next. If the festival of Passover, the celebration of God’s powerful liberation of his enslaved people, had resulted in Jesus’ victory over death, what might Pentecost bring? It is the day when Jews celebrate the giving of the Torah, which they receive as the sign of God’s gracious presence among them, enabling them to live in accordance with his will.

This Pentecost would bring something new to the small and confused group in that upper room. As they remembered the gift of the Law, they must have wondered what the new gift Jesus promised would be like.

But they had absolutely no idea when or how it would be given, or what it would mean for them.  Jesus had said to them, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ 

So they stayed in lockdown and faithfully prayed. And that is where we are on this Sunday after Ascension, the seventh Sunday of Easter. We are with the little group of bewildered friends of Jesus, huddling inside, hoping that something new is going to change our lives for the better, but having no idea of what it will be like or when it will happen. 

Like them, we may be anxious and afraid. They worried about the Roman soldiers and religious police, while we are concerned about the virus and the economy. But like them we know that we will not be going back to life as we once knew it. Something new is coming.

The question for us is how do we face the unknown with hope? Do we really trust that God’s Holy Spirit is with us to guide us into the future? Can we pray with confidence that as a church community, we’ll be led to make the right decisions about the many choices that lie before us? The return to worship in church, the way we carry out pastoral care for each other, the development of our work with vulnerable young people, and the big decisions around our 2022 capital project all lie before us.

So this time of waiting and praying can be put to very good use. We can reflect on God’s faithfulness to us thus far, even when we are afraid and doubtful. We can enlarge our vision of what God’s kingdom might look like here in Primrose Hill. And we can sit quietly, with open hearts and minds, even if our doors are still locked, to receive afresh the gift of the Holy Spirit.