Romans 6.1b-11, Matthew 10.24-39
The Second Sunday after Trinity, 21st June 2020 - churches closed
Living in a time of the coronavirus means learning to cope with contradictions. The paradox most commented on, and probably most keenly felt, is the way we’ve been showing our care for those we love by avoiding them - thus shielding each other from potential infection.
Then we’ve been applauding the likes of binmen and delivery drivers, and other previously-disregarded operatives now exalted as our key workers. And this week we’re adjusting to the odd scenario of the so-called people’s game - football - proceeding without any people present. [1]
Whilst we’ve heard how living under lockdown has damaged people’s mental health, an interesting twist on this is evidence that many people's anxiety levels have improved during the crisis. This has even been given a name: 'lockdown relief', describing how
'People who are driven by keeping up appearances, productivity, showing up to everything, achieving lots, being visible and being there for everyone have found themselves feeling relief at not having to perform any more.’ No fear of missing out while there was nothing happening to miss out on. [2]
A football-fanatic poet friend of mine has just penned these lines:
I’m not looking forward to football again
Not missing the beautiful game
My team are unbeaten since I don’t know when
I’m glad to be free of the strain [3]
So if ‘lockdown relief’ does us good, could it be that ‘normal’ life is what makes us ill? [4] It’s a tantalising teaser for our times.
Now, Christians are used to living with contradictions, because we follow the teachings of One who was fond of saying things like ‘the greatest among you will be your servant’ - and when we apply that maxim to our key workers we start to understand the power it carries. ‘It is better to give than to receive,’ he said: a paradox felt by many in lockdown, ceasing being consumers for a while and enjoying instead, finding caring and creative ways to reach out to others.
Some of Jesus’ sayings were so counterintuitive that even his devoutest followers have struggled to obey them: ‘Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you’ - is one of the hardest; and in a world rent apart by all forms of social division how radical a statement this is. Loving one’s enemy requires a change of heart of the deepest kind; one that most of us are reluctant to begin. Reflecting on the reason why this may be, the African-American author James Baldwin wrote “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” [5]
How we deal with the pain which we - as a people - have visited on other people - is at the heart of current debates about whether and how we should make reparations for our slave trade past; whilst also attending to the pain of those who today are enslaved - the between 21 and 46 million people in forced labour worldwide. [6] Then there is the pain of the loss of Empire which has haunted the British psyche for much of the past century, and the question of how a ‘faded old country’ can be reborn. [7]
“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” wrote James Baldwin in 1962. [8]
Baldwin was brought up Christian and maybe the roots of that statement were inspired by Jesus’ most fundamentally paradoxical proposition, ‘Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it’.
What does it mean to lose one’s life for his sake, so that we can find it? Is it about opening one’s heart to the possibility that the way of Jesus is the route to fulfilment, joy, life in all its fullness - and being prepared to face the pain of giving up some things about ourselves to make space for something better?
For some it may be about accepting and embracing the wounded parts of us, so as to become more understanding of the whole… to broker a truce between the damaged and broken bits and the bits we feel more comfortable with… to increasingly understand that we are works in progress and we’ll inevitably make mistakes… and to accept more easily that we get things wrong. [9]
One observer of the way that the lockdown changed us says that ‘We are all acutely aware of our own soft-bellied human vulnerability at this moment. It’s OK to not be OK, and to say so.’ [10]
Losing one’s life for Jesus’ sake, so that we can find it, may involve ‘worrying less about how we are perceived by others… learning how to turn self-loathing into self-care… finding compassion for ourselves as feelings of condemnation fade…’ [11]
This is the language of modern psychology. And in the language of scripture St Paul puts it this way: 'If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him’.
In later life James Baldwin’s Christianity morphed into a wider outlook on faith, and he said this: ‘If the concept of God has any use, it is to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God can't do that, it's time we got rid of him.’ [12]
We are here in prayer today because we believe that God can make us larger, freer, and more loving.
May his Spirit enable us each day to ‘engage with ourselves and others openly, honestly, prayerfully and graciously, to treat ourselves and others with respect and dignity’, [13] confident that Christ will help us use the paradoxes in our lives as a force for good.
Notes
[1] Premier League's return: How fans, players and pundits found the new normal. BBC, 18 June 2020.
[2] Farrah Jarral, The lockdown paradox: why some people's anxiety is improving during the crisis. Guardian, 29 April 2020
[3] Paul Cookson, I’m not looking forward to football again. Quoted in Steve Stockman, Football is back - why am I not excited? 17 June 2020.
[4] Farrah Jarral, The lockdown paradox.
[5] James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son.
[6] Wikipedia: Slavery in the 21st century.
[7] Simon Kuper, How to get over losing an empire. Financial Times, 22 January 2014.
[8] Baldwin quoted in Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? p.xix
[9] Adapted from The Reach Approach: Living with our contradictions – Covid 19 (Part 5)
[10] Farrah Jarral, The lockdown paradox.
[11] The Reach Approach: Living with our contradictions – Covid 19 (Part 5). Adapted.
[12] Wikipedia: James Baldwin. Quote referenced from Kimberly Winston, Blacks say atheists were unseen civil rights heroes. USA Today, 23 February 2012.
[13] The Methodist Church, A model statement on Living with Contradictory Convictions. Prepared for the 2016 Conference by the previous Marriage and Relationships Task Group. Adapted.
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