Will society experience a resurrection after the horrors of Covid-19?

Handout
The Rev Sam Wells1 April 2021
WEST END FINAL

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Keep in touch is such a strange expression, because it usually refers to things that don’t involve touch at all — sending a text or email, sharing a phone call or video conference. But it’s a phrase we’ve used this past year more than ever, because we all know how easy it is to catch the virus, how quickly illness can turn to dire emergency — and how fragile life is.

The days leading up to Easter, known as Holy Week, are all about touch. Palm Sunday is about thronging crowds, singing Hosanna, as Jesus rides a donkey into Jerusalem. This is the touch of electricity, of excitement. It’s a touch we’ve lacked this last year, as crowds have been banned, the togetherness of a football terrace or a concert auditorium has been forbidden, and the only gatherings have been the edgy ones of BLM marches or Clapham Common vigils.

At St Martin-in-the-Fields we still had our Passion Drama, enacting all the events of Holy Week. At the end Mary physically took down the body of Jesus from the cross and held a tableau just like Michelangelo’s pieta statue in St Peter’s in Rome. It was deeply moving — but a voice inside said “They’re not allowed to do that!” until we realised the actors playing the two parts are married. They both come from the Philippines: a reminder that there are no white characters in the Bible (besides Pontius Pilate, who doesn’t come out of the story that well).

Maundy Thursday is all about touch, because it’s the day we stoop down, like Jesus at the Last Supper, and wash one another’s feet. Except again we can’t do that — so clergy are dragging other family members along to ensure there are some feet available. But figuratively washing one another’s feet is what we do at our Sunday International Group, where asylum-seekers and volunteers mingle so naturally that you can’t tell them apart. Everyone at St Martin’s believes passionately that asylum seekers belong as much as anyone else — we even have one on our church council. The influx of those fleeing Hong Kong, enhancing our 60-year-old Chinese community, has also changed the way we think of refugees.

Good Friday is about touch in a different way again. You could read the whole Bible as God saying to people, “Keep in touch”. Good Friday is the day we contemplate the terrifying prospect that that touch might be forever lost. For Christians, Jesus is the way God touches humanity, and the way humanity touches God. On Good Friday, it feels like both are in jeopardy. Humanity utterly rejects Jesus, and, in his dying words “Why have you forsaken me?” it seems Jesus feels like God has ultimately rejected him. Over the past year plenty of people have felt the total isolation of Good Friday. Some have scarcely left home; others have had not a single call from friend or family in months; some have felt the scourge of long Covid, and wondered if they would ever recover. For a traveller keeping quarantine or for some of those The Connection at St Martin’s has helped get off the streets, life in a hotel room might seem comfortable. But when you can’t leave it for days on end, it can become a prison.

Good Friday is also the day Christians repent of the centuries-long collusion in and perpetration of persecution of Jews. The gospels portray humanity’s utter rejection of Jesus: but the church for too long chose to make this a pretext to vilify Jews. The last year has also been a time for scapegoating in the face of tragedy. An East Asian friend of mine has been called names and blamed for starting the virus. Crowds on social media have pounced on those they could safely blame for all the grief of the pandemic.

Easter is the centre of the Christian faith: it proclaims nothing is impossible with God. At St Martin’s we get up for a 5.30am lighting of the fire and sleepy, blinking celebrations. This is the great question this year: is the pandemic over? Are we between the D-Day of the vaccine and the VE Day of the end of distancing and masks? And more profoundly, is our society going to experience genuine resurrection, or simply a return to the old normal, with all the social inequalities and divisions that dominated our lives only 14 months ago? At St Martin’s we had to make three-quarters of our staff redundant last autumn: will we meet again? As we recall Mary Magdalene reaching out to touch the risen Jesus on Easter morning, these are the questions we ponder.

Reverend Dr Sam Wells is the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields

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