Easter Sunday / Year B
John 20:1-18
Bishop
Susan arranged for Dr. Melissa Perrin, a Chicago psychologist, to lead two recent
zoom conversations with the clergy of our diocese. Dr. Perrin’s focused on pandemic fatigue and self-care
by helping us to think about the year-long road we all have negotiated. We have been forced on the fly to reinvent life
– everything from raising our children to work routines to engaging some of the
most profound moments of life, such as tending to aging parents, comforting and
caring for family and friends in crisis, and gathering for the seminal moments
of life – birth, baptism, graduation, marriage, illness, and death. And we have done all of this largely while being
isolated and required to utilize new technologies.
Many
of us have operated under a self-generated sense of inadequacy and self-imposed
cloud of judgment. We set very high standards
for ourselves while at the same time seldom pause to acknowledge and appreciate
our ability to navigate the unknown and hazardous waters of this unprecedented
time. If anything in this sounds
familiar and sheds light on why you have been struggling, then you understand why
the bishop arranged for us to meet with Dr. Perrin.
She
identified several byproducts of these stressful times which resonated with me. One was mental fogginess. I find myself being more forgetful than
normal and not always sure how to launch into projects typically requiring little
or no mental effort to initiate in the days of yore. I learned I am not alone in this. It is a consequence both of stress and of lethargy. We are working so hard to figure out how to
do the normal things, thus it is difficult to focus. At the same time, while pretty much everything
is on hold, little in our lives seems urgent.
Among other things, for me this looks like being reminded on Monday I
promised to cover Morning Prayer for Al on Tuesday and then completely forget my
commitment 24 hours later.
After
several clergy related their struggles and shortcomings, Dr. Perrin said she
wished she had a stamp she could use to mark each of our foreheads with the word
“normal”. While we might think we are
the only one failing to keep up with the demands of this time, Dr. Perrin
reminds us we are not. Where we feel
inadequacy, Dr. Perrin identifies normalcy.
So one aspect of self-care is to ease up on your personal expectations
in order to recognize all you have been able to do in response to something not
one of us was equipped for.
Dr.
Perrin helped me to name something which I sense is on the rise as we begin to
emerge from the grimmest moments of the pandemic. She calls it ‘covid shaming’, which reveals itself
when others look down on you for where you are in all of this… and especially for
where you are not:
· You
mean you still don’t know have to zoom?
· I
can’t believe you don’t want to go out to eat with us.
· What? Your church isn’t open for public worship
yet?
I’m
confident we could fill up our Facebook comments box with a daunting list of
covid-shaming quips we have heard. The pressure
is mounting for each of us individually and collectively to achieve a simultaneous
and unified level of comfort and readiness as we move forward, but it is an expectation
which strikes me as unfair and unwise.
You will know when the time is right to go out to dinner. We as a church will know how and when we are
ready to regather in person.
Dr.
Perrin encouraged us to reflect about something very much at the heart of
Easter: the difference between resuscitation and resurrection. Both involve an effort to act on something
which has had the life go out of it, but differ in key ways. Resuscitation is a human effort. It involves taking the breath and energy of
one person and forcing it upon another in a frantic effort to bring back to
what was in a person who is lifeless. Resurrection, on the other hand, is a divine
gift. The life it imparts and the
process in which it occurs involves mystery.
No human effort or initiative can make it happen because it is God’s
doing. And while resurrection restores
what was, it also adds much more; taking on shape and form not possible before
and not defined or determined by human anticipation or imagination.
Resuscitation
and resurrection. It has been a while
since I interviewed for a new call, but I remember how, whether or not they
used this language, almost every congregation was looking ‘to come back to life’
and was expecting their next priest to make it happen. “We need more members. What great evangelism programs do you have?” “Our Sunday School doesn’t appeal to young
families. What will you do to fix it?” “We need more money. Tell us about your stewardship ideas.” Each interview felt like an inquiry into my
certification in congregational CPR. Do
I know how to breath my life into a lifeless church? Am I willing to keep up my efforts, even if
it kills me in the end?
What
I told those churches back in the day (and what I told the Search Committee
here at St. Paul’s) is this: “I can describe what we have done at the church where
I now serve, but I doubt it will do much for you here because we responded together
to a specific set of circumstances and opportunities. What I can tell you is I will be with you and
together we will look for God’s presence in our midst and respond to what God
is seeking to do.” This I now realize is
the difference between resuscitation and resurrection.
Image
if Jesus merely had been resuscitated.
He could have gone back to preaching and teaching and healing and no
doubt his followers gladly would have followed.
But God had something more grand in mind. God envisioned the defeat of death and the redemption
of the world – a new beginning – only possible through the resurrection of the
Son.
The
on-going pandemic has changed the world and our lives in so many ways. After a year-long winter, it is finally beginning
to feel like spring is near. There are
some things which rightly need to be resuscitated. We need to roll up our selves, get to work,
and restore the life which once was. But
there are other things which will never be exactly what they were before. God is working to make these things new. Burial linens will be unwrapped, sealing
stones will be rolled back, and resurrected life will emerge. May God grant us the wisdom to know which is
which and may God draw us willingly and gratefully into what will be.
