Waiting

Geoff Oates Hertford Team Lay Reader reflects: 

The Church calendar presents Lent, the weeks before Easter, as a time of waiting and preparing. But the biblical narrative is quite different. The weeks before Easter are full of frantic activity as Jesus and his growing band of supporters travel down to Jerusalem.

The waiting begins afterwards. The four Gospels give very different accounts of the weeks that follow the Easter event, but John paints a picture that might speak best to our times. There is little sign of joy or hope, but rather uncertainty and fear. The disciples shut themselves away behind closed doors, lest the authorities come rounding up suspected accomplices (John 20 v 19). They try to make sense of all that has happened, but they don’t make much progress. It’s easy for us, we’ve read to the end of the story. We already have a date for Pentecost. We know when their lock down ends.

But step by step the disciples move forward. Locked doors cannot shut out our anxieties, but nor can they shut out or hopes. It is Jesus, and not the Jewish authorities, who appears amongst them with a  greeting of peace, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

As many of us have learned in the past weeks, the Grace of our Lord Jesus, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit flow freely through the most unexpected new channels. When it is all over, stone walls, that have so often served as barriers as well as shelters to God’s people, may look less important than we thought.