Refractions

Precious Lord, take my hand,  lead me on, let me stand, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn; Through the storm, through the night,  lead me on to the light, Take my hand, precious Lord, Lead me home.  (Composed in 1932 by Thomas Dorsey as he grieved the death of his wife and newborn son) The people on the video-conference all nodded when one participant said what so many are saying in so many places.  Things are never going to be the same. The other bookend is this – Nobody knows how things are going to be. We are in the perfect place in the calendar of the church to speak about and into the loss of the familiar and the uncertainty of the outcome. You could easily call Holy Week by another name: “Things-Are-Never-Going-To-Be-The-Same Week”. The week begins with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and ends with his execution, with his friends and followers cowering behind locked doors. Twenty years ago a colleague, Paul Maclean, introduced me to anthropologist

Mean-Time Lent 5, Year A. Ezekiel 37.1-14, Romans 8.6-11, John 11.1-45 In the past weeks, life and the absence of life have become a matter of such sharp urgency that they dominate the considerations governing our daily lives, our hourly choices. An entire world economy has been all but suspended, we adopt new language and practice (such as “social distancing”) as normal and necessary, and we begin to understand that this meantime may be longer – and meaner – than we had thought. It is as a people whose sense of life and the absence of life has become focused and could easily become anxious that Ezekiel introduces us to the bonescape in the midst of which the hand of God has set him down. “It was full of bones… and they were very dry.” It is as a people whose sense of life and the absence of life has become focused and could easily become anxious that Paul opens the question of the relationship (or not) between flesh and spirit. It is as a people whose sense of lif