RESURRECTION

It is the season of resurrection. In the liturgical sense, this blog post/newsletter column should be published the week of Easter. But it is also a season when we can start to see a world transformed: many of our members have begun receiving vaccines for COVID-19, and leadership at the church is working hard to put together plans for how we will regather in person. Most of us became aware of COVID-19 during Lent in 2020, and there have been times in the last year where it has felt like a single, unbroken season of fasting and doing without- an extended period in the metaphorical desert. With spring this year, we start to move out of the desert and toward whatever comes next.

Here’s the thing about resurrection: it is never a restoration back to what was. It is the creation of something new, related to what has come before but somehow transcending it. For much of this winter, we introduced our worship service with words from Arundati Roy, who wrote last March,

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

It is the season of resurrection. What is the world we imagine? What does Lincoln look like, in the aftermath of this year? What does our church? We are not simply going back to what was. As we begin to plan what comes next, how will our community be transformed?

Note: I will be out of the office from April 5-12, and will not be checking or responding to emails during that time. 

Arundhati Roy article: https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca

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