Pushed on by 'bad' essay marks, I decided to enter the 2021 Theology Slam competition which aims to encourage young people to make theology accessible to the general public. I entered, and was chuffed to get an email to say that although I wasn't in the final (hallelujah: no extra work/public speaking!!), my entry was deemed to be top-ten worthy.
I don't know how many people entered, but I was chuffed with that news! I've always bee n so proud of this piece of writing, but never wanted to toot my own horn, however a recent sudden death of my friend Pennie meant that I knew anything I had to offer I needed to give.
You can give to Farleigh Hospice and CHESS to celebrate Pennie's life here: Tribute to Pennie Johnson, 1967 - 2021 (muchloved.com)
2020 came, with all the excitement that a new decade brings – we ignored the barely reported deaths, where people breathed automated machine-given perfect breaths that barely kept them alive. Their grief was not to be ours, their problems not ours.
We kept on keeping on, holding our collective hope of better and brighter. Our eyes turned inward, on the Brexit waves that demarcate our island, holding our fish close whilst we push away lives dependent on the kindness of the very same seas. Their grief was not to be ours, their problems not ours.
Death, it’s just a part of life. Our blind hope; or was it ignorance?, blazed on, hiding the truth that a virus doesn’t discriminate. Lights can be so bright as to blind. We human beings like to nurture our own sense of safety by merely avoiding any evidence that contradicts. We suddenly find on our shores, the shores that matter, that dying is easy, and living is harder.
The grief dealt to us on our sofas whilst we channel hop had doubled – we could no longer hide our untimely end behind office drinks and blind dates.
Is grief love with no place to go? Many found that having no place to go, they have been met with the anticipatory grief that they might one day have no final room to which to go, wearing a shroud that has no pockets.
Christians you would think have a sure and certain hope, an assurance that we one day will have a room to go; and we do. But we have a paradox – one which serves burial alongside baptism, dying to our own desires to receive life and finale where we trust these promises without Thomas’ luck of seeing the physical scars borne for us. It’s not an easy premise to carry.
We have a God with endless desire to spend time with us at our best and worse. A God who doesn’t meet us in platitudes, because it’s good that Grandad lived to 90, but a God who meets us in the raw pain of a beloved child, because we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it; we have to go through it. Our grief is sacrifice, love residing inside bricks and mortar for the sake of others, modelled by a God who could have resided inside Godself, but chose to meet us in the pathogens of that stable instead.
As Christians, we must tell of our new kingdom; God knows our united one does not have the answers. Good news that places hope in God, over and above the hope swirling in a vial of vaccine. Spread the news of our God who has a place to go, and deliberately chooses to spend time there. A gospel of coming together when we must stay apart. Our grief was to be God’s, our problems were to be God’s.
Loss is said to be the first stage of grief, and the second is a life remade on the fragments left behind. A hope that can wrestle with death is the only hope strong enough to support life.
A little plug for my college friend Imogen's winning entry on creativity in the womb: