Our Stories: On Love, Lament and Life After Lockdown
By Laura Taylor
We made it to level one Central Vineyard!! And after the initial novelty of hugging a lot of people and sipping too many flat whites - it’s become pretty clear that the rebuild is going to be gritty. Lockdown turned our world on its head and with the absence of restrictions comes an alleviated anxiety. I personally have been oscillating between the overwhelming joy of freedom and the waves of grief that roll in from seeing suffering escalate around me. There is a deep, resounding awakening that that the veil has been lifted. We can’t go back to before...but how do we go forward when around us friends are losing their jobs, once rock-solid companies are toppling, people are dying in cities our loved ones dwell in. We cannot be ignorant of our privilege and I personally have been grappling to find an appropriate response...what now?In the face of what has been dubbed an unprecedented period of suffering, many of us are seeking a reference point to alleviate the anxiety of the unknown. In April, Miroslav Volf tackled this in a podcast with Yale University stating that when faced with suffering we must do two things; firstly, to work out of faith and love for the common good and secondly - fight the culture of fear. He suggests that we can do that based on the knowledge that in times of suffering we have hope that “that in the end, there is a new beginning. And somehow if we can internalize that, when the crisis comes it is easier to face suffering and live as we ought to - fear notwithstanding”. In other words, we are to fear not, like Jesus calls us to. Not disregarding the suffering we are faced with, but instead seeing it clearly and not being overwhelmed by the prospect. This response is not trite; although it may appear somewhat this way when asked to simply ‘not fear’ in light of global suffering, mass unemployment and over-run health systems. But as Volf suggests in his podcast, the injunction of fear is never suspended alone but biblically is tied to the assurance that we are cared for, that God cares for us, and the promise that we will ultimately emerge as conquerors. Fear and trust in God are hand in hand.
Even in self-isolation, as a separated church gathering in our homes, afflicted in every way but not crushed or driven to despair as Paul reminds us, the Spirit laments with us and the presence and healing love of God dwells. This is the mystery of the biblical story - that God also laments. As we see in Genesis over humanity's wickedness, in the Psalms, even over his own bride of Israel, the Scriptures reveal an appropriate response to suffering is to actually recover the biblical tradition of lament. As beautifully stated by a grieving father, Nicholas Wolterstorff, in his book Lament for a Son, when we hold lament and trust in tension, then in our suffering we can explore the lament as a mode of our address to God. Heck even in Job, we see God finally speak after Job’s uncurated, mournful outburst of emotion. From this point Job’s understanding of humanity is expanded, particularly around themes of poverty and injustice - he is emphatically connected to the world’s suffering. But more interestingly - it could be suggested from this that God wants us to rebuke a tidy system of theology with no space for grief, to instead mourn, lament and wrestle with him in our suffering - not in piety but in full rage.
So in the wake of lockdown and in the face of suffering we can fear not, we can lament, but where to go from there? Something that has turned my world on its head is this notion of being an eschatological people. A people who are capable of responding to suffering with future-oriented, real hope for a world radically different from what we now see and know. For if the resurrection is the defining event of the new creation, and we are even to glimpse this new world we as the church need a different kind of knowing. This I think I am starting to understand, is the call on our church - to be a people that intervene in the present state of decay to bring unity to earth and reveal heaven as a hidden dimension of ordinary life by going out in new ways, accomplishing new creative tasks, being agents of love. If this is so, then it is imperative we rethink our here and now and live in a way that interrupts the degeneration of the earth. In this turbulent time, perhaps we are being asked to reignite our imaginations of what ministry is. Maybe this is an opportunity for whanaungatanga, to come together in love in the exact same way Pauline ecclesial teaching calls the early church into living as one body, embracing diversity and the other in their full ‘otherness’ - in both suffering and honour.
The very real implications of this are beautifully described by Jared Noel. A Christian doctor, Jared was diagnosed with bowel cancer and passed away in 2014. Shortly before his death, he grappled with various suffering theologies, and finally wrote “It is impossible to find meaning in the context of suffering without a community of people around you...to find hope in the midst of sickness and dying requires people who will journey with you. There is a cost to human suffering. In my case, that cost was measured in rounds of chemo, all eighty-nine of them. That cost is fairly brutal. But love is experienced when there are people close enough to you to see what eighty-nine rounds of chemo actually looks like. And that is where you find meaning. In the love that can generate hope no matter the circumstances, and no matter how close you are to your final, final moments”. Reading that, it becomes clear that Christ’s ministry points us to the present, to be an eschatological people who create spaces of healing, who love deeply and care for those who suffer around us, truly living from a biblical place of hope. Not to project theology or ourselves onto the suffering of others; but rather to sit with, mourn with, care with and ultimately reflect the heart of our ever-loving God, which is “not afraid of what is sick and ugly, but accepts it and takes it to itself in order to heal it”. What is most ground-breaking about this offering, is that it showcases the power not of suffering - but the response of love itself. As Jared poignantly comments “I would say that wherever someone points to suffering as having created significance and meaning, I would argue love could do the same and more. The creative response that takes up most of that space is love, going beyond yourself for the sake of others.” This, I’m learning, is our response in this time - to be agents of love. To be a people known for being full of peace and hope, whose ministry and commission is to see things made new in this city, in our land. A people of Heaven who can lament wholly, who are capable of generosity in the face of suffering because their imaginations are empathetically filled with the vision of what is to come.