COVID at Easter

This is an Easter like no other!

We cower, solitary,

Without fellowship or celebration,

With fear and grief in too many eyes.

Remember the first one?

They cowered too,

Quarantined in the upper room,

Afraid for their lives,

Afraid of being targets,

For the viral hatred of the day;

Feeling hope drip helplessly through their fingers

Like a broken egg,

Making a mess of their hideout,

Without any expectation

This loss could be restored.

Until they heard a rumour,

Too amazing to believe,

That the world had changed forever

Are we so different then?

Is our faith greater than theirs?

Do we live in holy expectation

While we flounder in our fears?

Remembering death is dead,

Do we take hold of hope’s coattails,

Or paralyse our grasp?

Do we let salvation penetrate

The heart’s cold corners?

Do we still sing hymns of wonder

When our voices rasp?

He who hung in darkness

When the midday sun was gone

Is the light of all the world

And of our darkness too.

Cleansing the temple

He comes to overturn

The tables of our dealing,

With ruthless, ruthless grace

Devoid of proper feeling.

He comes to strike undone

Our comfy compromises,

Allowance for the times,

And cunning mind-devices.

He comes to manifest

This kingdom of his Being;

To rip our blinkers off

And show us what we’re seeing.

He comes to challenge all

Our easy ways of living;

Call us to costly love

And drown us with forgiving.

He comes to liberate

From all false sacrifice.

The love, his love, is free,

And his the given life.

Palm Sunday, 2020

The streets are strangely silent.

No crowds now,

One solitary walker passes by,

Ignored,

And no hosannas split the air.

We don’t expect a rider down the road,

Except, in nightmares,

One on a pale horse,

And fear and loneliness wage silent war

Beneath the screeching of the cockatoos,

And the strange magic of the magpies’ call.

It is not the season now for resurrections.

This autumn draws us in with gloomy arms,

And whispers, tantalising,

“Do you have ...

Enough?”

I have the birdsong, I have the grass,

Green from the blessed, sweet, restoring rain.

And I have shelter, clothing,

I have food.

And I have mercy’s benison each day,

And joy because a king once rode for me

Into the streets of far Jerusalem,

And he rode further on,

Right on to death,

To that strait place where no one walks with us,

The bitter isolation of the tomb,

And flung it wider than a city’s gate.

Therefore, it matters not if no crowds shout,

Or if our Lenten season is prolonged,

Or if we walk on silent, empty paths,

Or if we stand apart, wider than breath,

And cannot mingle in our Easter songs.

The cross he rode to holds all time and space,

And every shattered hope, and every tear

And every aching for the skin’s embrace,

And every stuttered prayer, and every sin,

And every broken moment of our lives,

And every shame and terror, every doubt,

He carried them all with him and atoned.

And, though the streets lie silent under cloud,

For him with ears to hear, the stones cry out.