At times of national crisis such as the one we currently facing, people have often turned to the church for support as a source of strength and hope. In this crisis, however, we have to learn to ‘do church differently’. Because official advice is that assembling in great numbers in public is not a good idea. Because the sort of thing that the church is good at, and the sort of thing that is at the heart of our faith is not helpful in overcoming this crisis. The church is good at giving a sense of community, a sense of shared prayer and worship, a sense of drawing closer to God and to our neighbour in order for us to receive the strength and courage that is needed. Traditionally it has also been an imperative of our faith to give comfort to the lonely, isolated and to the vulnerable. All this sense of drawing closer as a community is not helpful in overcoming the spread of the Corona virus. As a church we need to re-learn how we can be of service to our community at a time where ‘social distancing’ is becoming the norm of our behaviour. The German Romantic and also Christian poet RM Rilke (1874-1926) in his prose book entitled ‘On Love and other difficulties’ wrote: ‘I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognise no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.’ – As Christians we can fill this crisis with our prayers to our saving God through Jesus and we can and must find new ways of assisting, simply by keeping in touch by phone perhaps, the lonely and isolated in our community and neighbourhoods.
Bernhard Schunemann (inspired by Lucy Winkett & Rainer Maria Rilke)
