self isolation, one for bread, two for exercise, three for saying my prayers ..........

Well today we went out to buy bread and we found it.

Not a lot, just a Lidl.

We didn't buy wine because we have some but now we can break bread and spill wine around the table and supper will become a Eucharistic Feast even though the Church is shut.

Which is in a way how my Anglican Ecclesiology works.

We celebrate the inbreaking of God's goodness and love by sharing this fellowship meal.

And after we gather to worship we leave the church to become servants of God's people the poor.

And, if we can do that with a good heart and a good conscience in the middle of a pandemic which is racing through the world at a rate that is truly scary, then we can believe that this thing will pass.

Somehow we have to take a measured view, we have to remain calm and in some sense figure out the end of the story whilst we are still at the beginning or more hopefully half way through.

This is what Jesus did when he heard that his friend Lazarus had died.

He didn't rush to the bedside, he didn't rush to the Graveside, he took his time because he sees into the circumstances of his friends death to the ending of the story.

When Jesus finally travels to see his friends Mary and Martha he does so to share their grief and to demonstrate in his raising of their Brother a future in which God's hand is at work.

Faced as we are with Covid 19, which is a Corona Virus mutated from animals (although conspiracy theorists are arguing that it could have been developed in a Laboratory according to the Chinese of course an American Laboratory and to the Americans a Chinese Laboratory) but as my first Vicar used to challenge me the conspiracy theory is historically unhelpful because he as an Historian knew that in history events were pretty much always a cock-up.

But whilst it  may be difficult to see very much further ahead than the three weeks in which we are self isolating it is also possible to see how so much of human nature that is good will in time be celebrated and so much that is bad will be changed for the better.

This week is Passion Sunday, next week is Palm Sunday and then Easter.

Covid 19 has rolled a stone across our lives a stone of hypocrisy, hype, governance, greed, fear, failure, disease and doubt.

These stones must and should be rolled away.

As Jesus calls Lazarus out of the Tomb his words witness to God's life giving grace. In the Church we meet for worship and scatter for service. Now with Churches closed we are called to reflect on God's love and faithfulness in Jesus, the stories that are emerging about the faithfulness of the scattered Church demonstrate a community of life and celebration. We tell these stories not because we fear death but because we know what it means to live.

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