Easter: A New Normal
A few things have happened this week that have been deeply depressing:
On my way home from work last Monday, Bletchingly Road was swarming with police cars. It was 4:00 pm and the police and forensics team had been called to investigate the murder of Dennis Kellond, an 88-year-old resident of the village. A 41-year-old man from Lingfield has been arrested, but it’s little comfort.
A volunteer in the chaplaincy team at East Surrey hospital died of Covid-19. She was an elderly woman who walked with a stick, but despite her frailty she had faithfully served patients on the wards for 10 years. I visited her in the intensive care unit on Monday and tried to minister to her through layers of impersonal PPE. I couldn’t take a bible in with me because of infection control, so I recited Psalm 23 from memory and prayed with her. She died at 10:00 am the next morning.
You could easily argue that death is just a part of life. The reality is that one out of every one dies. It takes tragic circumstances, or injustice, or the scale of death to make us take notice of it anymore. We have gotten used to its presence and existence.
But within each of us is an inexplicable desire. A feeling that is hard to rationalize or put into words. As Blaise Pascal once said, “The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not of.”
Counsellors classify this experience as part of the bereavement process. Anger, guilt, bargaining and depression are all part of that process, but the first reaction is always DENIAL. Something within us longs, hopes, maybe even at times believes that this is not the way life is supposed to be. It’s like a phantom pain experienced by those who have lost a limb. At some deep level, we refuse to accept reality as it presents itself.
The truth is, something awful has happened to us. Something worse than the day when God barred the gates of paradise because of our sin. What’s happened is unthinkable. We have gotten used to living on the other side of Eden. “The people walking in darkness….have adjusted their eyes.”
May this Easter season again remind you that death is not normal. It was never meant to be. It should not exist, and it’s OK not to accept it. It is a temporary and unwelcome guest, which will one day be asked to leave.
“There is a nice symmetry in this: Death initially came by a man, and resurrection from death came by a man. Everybody dies in Adam; everybody comes alive in Christ. But we have to wait our turn: Christ is first, then those with him at his Coming, the grand consummation when, after crushing the opposition, he hands over his kingdom to God the Father. He won’t let up until the last enemy is down—and the very last enemy is death!1 Cor. 15:21-26. The Message
People talk about returning to normal after the Coronavirus pandemic is over. Personally, I hope we don’t return to normal. I hope we return to a new normal. And I hope for a reawakening. A search for the normal God had in mind when he said, ‘let there be light’ and when he reached down and gently blew on a handful of dust.
– Phil.
