So with joy and anticipation I saved the date – for a significant birthday party, for a wedding anniversary celebration, for friends coming to stay, for other outings and trips. Now of course they’re all postponed – or in some cases we like to think postponed, but really they are cancelled. So my diary now has lots of things crossed out, with not so much to go in, or even pencil in relating to gathering together, or meeting for a coffee; just lots of question marks.
I noticed in our reading for last Sunday, Pentecost, the disciples had gathered ‘all together in one place’. Gathering is important to us. We can refer to the words in Matthew where Jesus says, ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’. Sometimes this sentence is used in a bit of a jovial way, or as a sort of apology, when only two or three people turn up at a meeting - Jesus is there anyway. The context in Matthew’s gospel could well be one of persecution, when to ‘gather’ was quite dangerous, and this provides a very different focus for these words.
I really do miss gathering on a Sunday at church – not just to meet people, to see friends, to share, and to care, but gathering with a purpose – to worship and engage with God. Our BHC online services are great – wonderful, imaginative and encouraging to faith, but I do miss ‘going to church’. Maybe this is something to do with physically going, moving from one place to another, putting myself in the ‘right’ place. Trying to engage with God at my desk, in front of a screen, my work screen, just isn’t the same for me. This is more to do with me than the nature of the product.
Half of me is hanging on to get back to some sort of normality – that is, the way we were and did things before. The other half is telling me to ease myself gently into recognising that actually we aren’t going back to how things were before – and I find that hard. It’s also hard because we don’t yet know what our ‘new normal’ kind of church gathering will look like, and that’s unsettling. It will be the same, but different – same buildings, but used in a different way.
Although the end may seem tantalisingly close, there won’t be a big celebration party. The natural world will recover, and there are already signs of a greener planet, with new life, in its broadest sense emerging. We will be able to gather.
God is still there – save the date.