Running Into the shadow of death: Holy Saturday reflections

We are all avoiding the plague of our times: the Covid-19.

But what if the entire purpose of this pandemic is to force us to face up to things we have avoided, ignored, neglected, feared -- so that we may all truly live?

***

This Holy Saturday, we can learn from the experience of the disciples as we consider their journey, and find courage to run into the shadow of death.

Jesus began sharing about his impending death with his disciples months before the dreadful event came to pass. It is understandable that they neither expect nor want to face that reality. Perhaps they chose to hear it as a parable, one that did not seem to directly impact them as yet.

In the final week, these disciples would both enjoy and endure a complex of emotions and thoughts beginning with the raucous welcome of the crowds as they entered Jerusalem, a positivity that would soon be become an alchemy of confusion, anger, cowardice and despair.

Eventually, as the inevitable reality hit them that their beloved Teacher and Friend was overcome by the political machinery of the day and had died, the only thing they could do was flee for their lives, huddling together in fearful trepidation. They had chosen to follow this Rabbi and were expecting a bright future, but what they were left with was complete vulnerability and uncertainty.

***

We too plan our lives and choose to follow bright light and great ideas we expect would lead to good outcomes: that promotion, that expansion, that success, that accolade.

Along the way, our overriding passion invariably run roughshod over lesser matters, like relationships, the environment, the next generation, our faith.

As millions of us live this way, we create ecosystems of illusions where we focus on our bubble of security and success, consumption and comparison.

Covid-19 has burst our bubbles.
Covid-19-19 has shown up the cracks of our ecosystems.
Clovis-19 has revealed the hearts of leaders and followers alike.

This virus with a crown, like the Saviour with His crown, forces us to confront our illusions and realities.

For the longest time, those who are able and privileged, educated and trained, knew about the cracks.

The disciples were taught to be humble, serve, trust, and live in missional faith. But there were deeper issues they need to face up to. There were clues when they jostled for favour and when they continued to speak before they truly heard.

But they were the chosen.
We were the middle-class and rich who lived comfortable (even if stressful) lives.

But they had the Master who calmed seas and feed thousands.
Our crazed chase for the next Instagrammable moment, fancy meal and exotic destination (and these can be ‘spiritual’), gave us an invincibility cloak of sorts.

God let it all come apart at the seams, forcing us to look at how weak our stitching of rationale, practice and soul are.

All the issues that this created world and its poorest inhabitants face as an ongoing reality now confronts us: food security, freedom, choices, mortality.

You see, the poorest in our world live literally moment by moment. They won’t know when cholera, measles, an auto accident, a work accident, or a fist fight can change their lives forever.

This level of human vulnerability is foreign to most of us.
Even with this pandemic, some of us have governments that nanny us so well, that things are mitigated.

What if you did not have healthcare?
What if a lockdown is activated in a few hours and your home is 300 kilometres away?
What if social distance isn’t quite possible because you share a dormitory with fifteen others?

***

Holy Saturday is the day the Bible has no record of. Nothing happened — it seems - except for a lot of soul search.

Did the disciples accuse each other?
Did they look back and try to trace for clues to make sense of things?
Did they confess their sins to each other and seek forgiveness?

In all probability, they did all of that and more.

For one thing, each of them decided to remain with the others.

Who are the people who have been in your journey?
How can you take the conversation deeper - to the level of your soul?
What traveling companions will you pick for your onward journey?


The prophet Isaiah helped us see this -

But the LORD was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief…. (54v10)

For God, there is a necessary pain He allows because of the greater good that can come out of it.

From climate crisis to corruption to mental health issues, God sees a greater good coming out of this Pandemic.

Do we?

Let us not merely hope for things to go back to the way things were. That is going back. No, we need to go forward.

To do so, we have to search our souls, rend our hearts, change our minds.
To do so, we have to relinquish our ‘rights’ to a way of life we designed for our maximum comfort and minimum cost.
To do so, we have join with others to create new ecosystems and continue to reimagine life so that others may flourish too.

***

It is Holy Saturday.

We are awashed with a complex of emotions.

Personally, my WhatsApp is filled with a array of messages filled with memes, anger about the government, information about where to get help etc etc.

My own life has taken a jolt. Even as I already work from home, there are nonetheless adjustments with the loss of income, the limitation of movement and of course, home-based learning. Life goes on too, with one parent hospitalised and my own health being investigated.

I have to deal with these. But more importantly, I have to grief for our world - that God loves and gave His Son for - and search my own soul, for how things should be. 


The future is being built in the present, and real change comes when we are desperate enough for it.


May this Holy Saturday find us desperate enough for a whole new world.

***

Eventually, the women decided to visit the tomb. Once the Sabbath was over and movement was allowed, these women headed towards the site of death. It is a surprising move that they had the courage to face the soldiers guarding it. It is a strange development for women to want to bring their emotional wreckage to a closure. Or perhaps, used to the earthy tasks of preparation, they simply did what they would normally have done…

But O what awaited them!

This pandemic is giving us an extended Holy Saturday. God knows our soul search needs to be extensive and intensive.

Will we brave it and walk right into the shadow of death?
The death of our old ways?
The death of our cherished habits?
The death of our values?

This kind of courageous soul-searching requires solitude: set times to reflect, think and pray.

Head over to  Quiet Morning  {click here} where I provide a resource for us to learn to do that.


May we be desperate, brave and intentional — — so as to be surprised by the Resurrection!

[this was first written and published on Medium]

Turn your Isolation into a Gift: Quiet Morning

Isolation is hard.

While some joke about how this time of distancing and staying home suits Introverts, the truth is we all need meaningful connection.

And possibly the most meaningful connection to have is with oneself and with God.

Too many people are strangers to themselves - what makes them tick, why some things perturb them so much, what can help them move forward, how to stop the endless loops...

Too many who claim faith struggle to trust God - the Unseen One.

This is why (and thanks to friends who egged me on) I am making

Quiet Morning 

more widely available.

I realise that the simple decision to set aside time, to lean towards Being rather than Doing, to slow down and open our entire selves before God and to relish a morsel of truth is so transformative.

I hope many will join this and experience something we do desperately need in this world: peace within ourselves, peace with God... which enables us to become peacemakers - and this Pandemic has shown us how far from peace: creation damage, discrimination, weak healthcare systems, mangled political realities that hurt the poor and weak...

In God's mercy, He has sent Light so we also do see good being done by many during this Pandemic. But overall and understandably, this has also aroused a sense of PAN(dem)IC.

I would admit that it has not been easy. Different ones of us find different parts of it hard. From work to family life, to developing fastidious hygiene habits and ensuring that there are groceries... it is easy to go overboard with the news, go under the sense of helplessness, go round and round with all that needs to be done! Even as one who has worked from home for so long, I find this prolonged season of unfolding bad news wearisome.

This made me believe that all the more, we have to seek out space to calm our fears, understand what is going on and sow into a way of life that can bear much fruit both now and in the future.

I believe in a Life-giving God, who painfully allows this to awaken us to what Life is truly about, and is drawing us towards a way of life that will be more peaceful, truthful and bountiful.



As I started this post, I saw a picture of a seed.

Photo by Artur Łuczka on Unsplash

Unless we stop to think of it, it's easy to forget that a seed is so full of promise and potential. In each seed is the possibility of an Orchard!

But the seed must endure isolation, loneliness, and apparent death, to all it has known. It needs to be broken open, risk, to allow it's generative ability to play out as it lets go, endures a change and stretches towards the sun.

Yes, this feels like a season of great loss, and I do not diminish the real loss of jobs and security  that many do face. But it can be a good and necessary loss, one that if we are willing to endure may lead us to a way to both empathise and act on behalf of those who are at the brink of losing everything.



It is also a season of wilderness. All our highways are empty and streets and squares are quiet*...and we feel collectively sent out into the wilderness where things are stripped down to a sense of survival.

But again, this imagery and experience holds another dimension. The wilderness in Scripture is a very special, appointed place for divine exchange. It is where Abraham encounters God the Promise Maker,  Moses gets his commission and experiences God as the Deliverer, where countless battles are fought and won... and where Jesus drew the line of his ultimate loyalty to God his Father.

Down through the ages, the wilderness is sought by those who are spiritually serious. We have to learn to welcome it as God brings it. For He is there waiting, for us to show up,

If you dare get up and go forth to meet God, you will find that His Word is true, powerful and even accurate, and you will also meet and know yourself much better.

And my dear friend, we need you in our world.


I have much more to share, but for now, this should suffice.

Here, would you take a look at this:

Facebook Video

Then, I hope you will hop over to this page to get started: Quiet Morning Details



*Empty now: a 5 min video of major cities today

Toilet Paper Run: is there more than fear at work?

It began in Hong Kong. Then it happened in Singapore. The story then darkened when armed gangs resorted to thievery, no doubt believing that the once humble toilet paper will soon fetch a handsome sum.

Most recently, as the incidence of the Coronavirus infection begin to spot more places in the world, we see the same behaviour. Apocalyptic purchasing has existed for a while in the once CHristian United States, where the Christian narrative of the End Time is woven into the cultural narrative in thick and thin strands.

But Japan surprised us. Orderly, organised, lawful Japan.

Kentaro Takahashi, Bloomberg

Not only did their shelves empty, measures such as this had to be taken even:

https://soranews24.com/2020/03/02/people-in-japan-are-now-stealing-toilet-paper-in-midst-of-coronavirus-crisis/

Everyone wants to know: WHY‌ toilet paper?

The virus’ effects do not include diarrhoea. This prompted Youtuber NileRed to release this
'scientific video', funnily suggesting that it was for moonshine!


What's your theory?

My puzzlement led me back to a theory I read a few years back: Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory. It isn’t too huge a stretch to say that it is the theory that explains everything – psycho-social. Girard's astounding observation is that human behaviour is mostly us copying each other.

Here is a brief video that explains it: The Mimetic Theory in brief

The question is why? At the heart of it ---


We are beings of Desire. But we inevitably get our cues for what is desirable by watching and aping us. Remember the Joneses and the commandment given by smoke and thunder to ‘not covet’? Both the idiom and the command cuts right at the heart of how we desire and what it can drive us to do.

Why toilet paper? Because if someone else is doing it with zeal, we are safer off doing it too, just in case. Yes, herd mentality. But more than herd mentality, it is our desire, to be safe, to be right. So, just -in-case.

For all our loud prognostications about progress and enlightenment, access to information and advancements in technological abilities, we are still basically lost little creatures hoping to get something right.

That’s our pulse. The fear of losing, losing out, and being lost.

Girard is right. I see it in my own life and countless others I observe. We have a deep inward drive to reach for something to slake the thirst of Desire, but we don’t really know how to, because the Desire is lost under layers of parental training, folk wisdom, modern science, personality preferences, and favourable as well as unfavourable life experiences. Our feelings, brains, and circumstances conspire to point us in certain directions. Our agency is severely compromised.

So yes, there is a virus of fear, but its host is our restless, aimless hearts.


The profundity in this little phrase is often missed:

Perfect love casts out all fear*

Fear is resident, it dwells, stalks, lingers… and has to be cast out. The only force strong enough isn’t information - “we assure you there is enough". To cure this primordial, existential fear requires something far stronger. It takes Love.

But O how our views and experiences of Love are so broken, inadequate and tainted.

Who really loves me, we ask in quiet desperation when we are stark honest. Is there a way to be loved without the burden of guilt - that sense that we aren't really measuring up, or worth it?

Is it possible to know such a Love that we can rest and believe that we will make it through another day, even sans toilet paper?

Such a Love cannot be rooted in emotion. It cannot rise from the soil of accomplishments. It certainly isn't found in our wanting it, no matter how mighty we fantasize.

We get glimpses of it in kindness, faithfulness, affirmation, support, and understanding. These are important signposts that such a Love exists, but in the long road of life, we long to walk towards what these signposts point towards: a Being of Love.

So really, the fear is a symptom, of our Desire.

We desire to find out and be found by this Being of Love. 

But who has time to seek, search and scour? So despite the needle of our heart's compass pointing true north, it flings wildly as we throw ourselves into work, relationships, causes and a thousand lesser lodes of magnetism.

What if this Being of Love not only waits for us at journey's end, but is present and involved in our lives now?

Yes, right now, in the middle of it all, of the mess, of the mistakes, of the morose reality of our times.

We need to encounter this Being of Love, and we need an experience that creates a way for us as mimetic beings to fashion our lives after a worthy model.

We need a Whole Love and a Wholesome model.

Perhaps this is why God had to send his son Jesus to live as a fully human being, to suffer hunger, deprivation, disappointment, loneliness, opposition and even betrayal. Even a cursory look at what he lived through leads to an inescapable conclusion: this guy is relatable (even as a woman, I can say that).

More than that, we find Jesus desirable. He is the One we want to be like.

The way he stands his ground, speaks with authority, and act with compassion. The way he can relate to children, authority figures, the old and marginalised. His confidence, composure and convictions. His sense of purpose and passion. The light in his eyes as he tells another parable laced with humour. His gentleness.

The perfect human.


So the great Christian truths that God has made a way to set us free, to restore our agency, to start us on a homeward journey towards Desire is the answer to the toilet paper run, or rather to stop running after metaphorical toilet paper.

And if you are willing, Jesus has made it all possible.



*1 John 4v18

This phrase is found in a larger text:

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

In the contemporary Message version :

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.

We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.

If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.

And this powerful song, which I learnt when I lost my beloved brother, reminds me that my worst fears are swallowed up in Love:

Blessings


Note:
Mimetic Theory has another important dimension: the Scapegoat theory. Again, we find this happening - the blame game. The Chinese, the government, the neighbour - are all convenient scapegoats for us because agency is painful and hard for us who are wandering and wondering. A good summary article: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/11/16/evolution-rene-girard