'Postponed Until Further Notice'

Postponed Until Further Notice

‘Waiting Can Be Endlessly Frustrating.’

I listened to myself say these very words, on Thursday’s Ascension Day service recording. And yes, it can.

Today has been one of those days.

I found myself bristling on the telephone when someone innocently enough asked if I had been having a good long break!

And this only days after writing and speaking about Graced Waiting.

Yes, there are days when I appreciate the sunshine,

seeing birds in the garden, photographs of beautiful things in God’s creation, 
the extra time at home with family, which otherwise we would not have.

And then there are other days, which for whatever reason,

are deeply frustrating.

I get that sense that many of us waver between days when we are more able to accept the restrictions, and other days which for whatever reason, we rail and complain.

Today, it was in seeing the increasingly emptying pages of a diary.

Until now, bookings and plans were marked postponed or cancelled.

Almost ten weeks in, there are fewer plans to postpone.

It is deeply saddening that weddings are being postponed, and to see the growing list of Baptisms which cannot be undertaken.

There are some things in abundance, including the seemingly endless emails, which in pages long describe the restriction on us as church, should we decide to reconvene in some way.  And this week, the memory of a, for me, fruitless clergy conference by Zoom, where I saw colleagues aplenty but had the opportunity to say hello to almost none. I would be a much better chair, I thought.

Who would have anticipated the very strange expectation in some quarters to do Drive Through Church, along with the growing sense that ministries and events will at best not reopen any time soon, and the growing oddness of it all. 

I don’t mean to complain; but in this day, I am being made to ask myself and others, how we will be church together in the times ahead.

On this day, I refuse to have to justify myself and the shape of ministry here.

I cannot visit the hospital.

Pastoral visiting is all but reduced to phone calls, and video links, to posting Thinking Of You cards, and trying to remember to pray.

Someone suggested I could go if needed and sit in your garden for a visit. Perhaps.

However it is weighted up, this has not been a good long break.

It is not life giving or pleasant to go every week to an empty church building, and listen to a bell toll to worshippers who are not physically allowed to be present, and get on with saying my prayers. 

In this day, I am trying to remember that this ministry, frustrated by an unseen enemy, with endless restrictions, is a gift from someone who gave His own life for us, that we could live. In abundance.

These in between days do not seem to be abundant. 

As I hear about economic woes, the rising national debt and uncertain plans for the future, I wonder how our very first brothers and sisters looked ahead in their day.

They too lived through in between days.

The One they had trusted and followed, had been taken outside the city gate, to the place of least grace, and had His very life taken from Him.

Their plans and the city were in uproar.

How dis - graced to see the outpouring of ire and bile from mouths and hearts of their fellow countrymen.

How would they carry on, rebuild, and look with hope to a future?

Jesus has that unexpected way of coming along side, speaking His words of peace and encouragement, and giving direction for the path ahead.

In His garden tomb reassurance, it was enough that He said her name, ‘Mary.’ He was known by His voice, and in His words.

His sheep will know His voice, we are told.

And His own closest followers were reassured and comforted by His presence on that first Easter Sunday evening, when He came to them in the Upper Room. And the next week, as He returned to them, this time to reassure Thomas. And how they learned the weight of His promise, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’

And Peter, so loud, so forward, so impetuous, so faltering, picked up from seeming defeat and failure, when Jesus met them for breakfast at Galilee.

He again learned who is the Good Shepherd, the One who leads and guides, and commissions and directs His flock.

And then forty days after His victory over sin and death, He departs from  their sight, just as He had said he would. And in those direct and seemingly unsympathetic words, they are told by the angels,

‘Men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking into the sky.

This same Jesus … will return.’

How? When? What would the future be like?

Our first brothers and sisters had to wait only ten days, until the promised Advocate and Comforter would by poured out into the life of the church, to equip her for the in between days ahead.

And we are waiting still. We are promised that no one knows the day or the hour, only the Father, when our Saviour will return.

Until then, sky gazing is not helpful.

We have a job to do.

We are commissioned to get on with the gathering in of His harvest; even in these frustrating, joyful, inspiring, discouraging, uncertain, seemingly endless in between days.

How our fellowship and ministry might look in the future, who knows.

Today, though, there is a life to be lived, work to do, and a Saviour to be adored.

And with God’s help, when I go next to pray , I will try not to see the empty pews, but to remember you, your fellowship and support, and to gather before the One who gave so much for each of us.

As I close, I realise too that I am thankful to the someone who sent a card this week and the someone else who sent an email, both to say how much they appreciated hearing my voice recently on the radio. The diary may read postponed, and I might still bristle at the words of another, but until the in between days come to an end I am called to Wait in Grace, and bring the uncertainty and frustration to Him who leads and guides and undertakes for us in ways we do not always understand.

Amen.