And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night. (Exodus 13:21)

“Metanoia [repent], for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17)

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.” (Acts 3:19)

“John’s baptism was a baptism of metanoia [repentance]. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” (Acts 19:4)

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the Pandemic being declared.  All of us will have Pandemic stories – memories and changes that we will tell to each other for quite some time.  “The time when my world changed”, “the time when the world shut down”; the time when we all changed in ways that we couldn’t have imagined. 

For some of us, the Pandemic represents great loss.  Loss of lives that mattered to us.  Loss of health.  Loss of a sense of permanence and stability.  The lingering effects of this trauma can still be seen in the edges of our society; the breakdown of health and social systems, the breakdown of relationships and community; the lingering mental health issues of anger, anxiety, depression and fear. 

We are, in many ways, people who have been, overnight, thrust into a collective wandering through a rapidly changing wilderness, much like the Israelites were so many centuries ago.  Their stories, our Scriptures, have now become a way to navigate our way through Post-pandemic life.  Their stories, our Scriptures, have become a way to hear their trauma, and navigate our own trauma.  A way to hear their faith when the world has been turned upside down, when our own lives and faith have also been turned upside down.

Generally, (and this is a sweeping generalization!) Canadian Protestants are kind of change-phobic.  We like to say things like “God is the same, yesterday, today and forever”, as if it’s a mantra that will keep our faith rooted and familiar.  ‘Home’ is defined by familiarity.  We have a church home, a family home – we even have home libraries and grocery stores.  Home is more than familiarity and comfort.  Home becomes what is ‘right’, and ‘good’ and in need of preserving. 

The Pandemic rocked all those places of home.  Routines had to be changed overnight and in ways that were unfamiliar and previous been disregarded as unnecessary in ‘inferior’ ways of doing things.  How many of you ever dreamed you would worship virtually for the better part of 3 years?  How many of you thought virtual communication such as Zoom or Facetime as inferior ways of communication that broke down society?  I know I did.  I railed against people using technology to communicate instead of face-to-face.  I never dreamed that gathering in community would be unsafe and life-limiting and that the only way to preserve wellness was virtual worship. 

We spent 3 years wandering in a Pandemic wilderness that has changed how we communicate, how we gather, even what we believe is important and necessary to our faith. 

But here’s a little tidbit of something that I realized this week:  Christianity is all about change.  Our scriptures continuously call us to a place of “metanoia”, of turning around, of repentance, of change.  We’ve kind of watered it down a bit to a personal need to, you know, just kind of be nicer people and not do awful things like speed on Cty Rd 1, but the concept of metanoia is much much more than that.  It’s a call to a complete shifting in the way that we respond to each other, to a world and even to God.  It is a place where we turn around and see the pillars of cloud and fire leading us through our post-exilic world, our post-pandemic world and well – even our post-Christendom world. 

Its hard to turn around when you’re holding on so tight to familiarity.  In fact it can be painful.  Our proverbial grasp on the places we call home means that things are wrenched and wrenched hard when we are being forced to let go. 

And so maybe the solution is to let go of our on volition.  To choose to let go.  To choose to let go and recognize our call to metanoia, our call to see the pillar of cloud and fire, and our Call to the nearness of the Kingdom of God. 

So if you’re feeling the Pandemic trauma this week; if you’re feeling the deep-seated longing for the life pre-Pandemic, where things were predictable and familiar – I totally ‘get’ that.  And I believe firmly that part of what we need to do collectively is recognize and allow ourselves to grieve and feel the trauma of what has happened in the past four years.  The Pandemic has changed us permanently, and no, many of the changes are not good, and have exposed great flaws in our society.  But the truth of our faith is that we aren’t called to permanence.  We are called to change.  To Metanoia.  And that change does lead us to God’s kingdom and God’s world.  I don’t know where we are going.  I really don’t and that’s tough for planners like me.  But I am looking hard for those pillars that will lead me out of this wilderness.

Blessings today and remember you are Loved.

~Rev. Lynne