Resurrection deferred? COVID-19 & the disruption in liturgical time (2)

In Part 1, I drew on the insights of trauma theory, to begin to explore how the collective traumatic experience of COVID-19 is disrupting and disordering our experience of time. I focused there on the political dimension of this - the efforts by the powers-that-be, in the midst of the current crisis, to forget COVID-19's political 'pre-history'; but also the emerging possibilities, seen most clearly at the grassroots level, for new and good things to remain, through and beyond the crisis. Part 1 finished with trauma theologian Shelly Rambo's suggestion that 'the rhetoric of "re" - rebuilding, restoring, recovering - comes at a cost' - a suggestion that leads us into explicitly theological language, and invites us to consider what the COVID-19 crisis is doing to liturgical time - or, indeed, what liturgical time might have to offer us in the midst of COVID-19.

'Silver linings': time for redemption?

'A linear reading of cross and resurrection places death and life in a continuum; death is behind and life is ahead; life emerges victoriously from death. This way of reading can, at its best, provide a sense of hope and promise for the future. But it can also gloss over the realities of pain and loss, glorify suffering, and justify violence.' (Shelly Rambo, Spirit and Trauma, p.143)

Surveying the Christian theological landscape, Shelly Rambo's conclusion is that the overwhelming weight of the tradition places 'death' and 'life' in opposition to each other, and roots theologies of 'redemption' - one of Christianity's 'foundational metaphors' - in either Good Friday, or Easter Sunday, or the relationship between the two.

In wider Western culture, she identifies a similar desire to tell redemptive stories: individual and collective stories of 'pivotal turning points' in which suffering and hardship is encountered, and 'after which suffering is surpassed, yielding something greater... Eventually, something better - something new - comes about. Good eventually triumphs over evil; life triumphs over death.' 'Every cloud has its silver lining,' we say. 'No pain, no gain'.

And yet traumatic suffering - 'the suffering that remains' - can be sidelined, negated, 'in the quest for a redemptive ending'. Alongside theologian of disability Sharon Betcher, Rambo cautions us against 'the drive to perfection, wholeness, and ... newness as goals for human life'. Such goals exclude too much of the ongoing lived experience in which life and death remain 'peculiarly entangled'. Such goals exclude too many people for whom the complex ambiguities of 'what remains' are stubborn, persistent, unavoidable.

Holy Saturday: the 'in-between' space

Rambo directs our attention, instead to the space 'between cross and resurrection'. What we will find there, if we look attentively and patiently enough, is 'a new way of being... a form of life that is not triumphant' but, instead, 'life configured as remaining', 'love making its way through death'.

Many of my friends and colleagues, both locally and wider, have reflected in the last few days on how this 'Holy Saturday' space - between Good Friday and Easter Sunday but, in solidarity with those first followers of Jesus, without full knowledge of the new dawn which lies ahead - is perhaps the day of all days for these present times. Entering into Jesus' friends' experience of shock and grieving, of longing and waiting, of uncertainty and fear - that has felt very close to what we've been doing, individually, communally, societally, globally. One local friend and colleague put it succinctly: 'a day isn't long enough', to truly inhabit that space. This year's Holy Saturday began before 11th April, and will last long beyond it.

In the midst of trauma, time is disrupted, ruptured. Holy Saturday is entangled with Good Friday, the experience of waiting and watching with dying loved ones - from a distance, agonisingly, like the woman who followed Jesus all the way to the place of crucifixion. The grieving of Holy Saturday includes the memories, resurfacing in disturbing, uncontrollable ways - as if we're re-living it, facing it again - of death in all its grim, helpless, heart-breaking reality. Living through Holy Saturday also recalls earlier moments: Jesus' emotional turmoil in the garden of Gethsemane - 'take this cup from me' - and the disciples' inability to 'watch with [him] one hour'. Sleep, too, the body shutting down to preserve itself, is a response to trauma. How can we stay awake, in solidarity with those in the crucible of suffering, when we ourselves are feeling wearied by the effort of 'holding it together'?

It's been a tradition of 9 years now in Hodge Hill, that Holy Saturday evening is marked by a very different kind of 'Easter Vigil' to that which the Church of England's liturgical structures offer. Rather than a gathering in church to remember, at length, 'God's mighty acts' in the history of the world and of the people of Israel, here a handful of people have met in a patch of local wasteland - where, exactly, has varied from year to year - just before sunset, with folding chairs and blankets, lanterns and flasks of hot drinks, and shared stories of loss, of grief, of hopes disappointed or deferred, of longings for new life that have not yet become fully visible.

This year, of course, we've not been able to gather. We've not been able to linger in any space - indoors or outdoors - other than those of our own homes and gardens (if we have them). So we offered folk here some suggestions for doing the latter - for lighting a fire, if possible, and for remembering, for grieving, and for 'hanging on in there', holding on to each other in whatever we can, holding on to scraps of hope. It was barely a 'liturgy'. It had minimal structure, reflecting the experience of this 'in-between time' where time feels like it's standing still. It had poems, and a prayer or two, but was mostly intended to open up, and hold open, a space to be, a space in which to remain. And it was offered with the expectation that there may well be other evenings, in the days and weeks to come, which need to be held open as 'Holy Saturday spaces' for each of us, and for us collectively. That Holy Saturday will 'remain' - that we will not easily 'get over it' or 'move on' - and that we will need some help, encouragement, resourcing, sustenance - to be able to remain in that space.

[continued - in Part 3]