Cathedral View: Turned upside down and inside out

I had no idea. None of us had any idea that within weeks the things that we thought challenging would look positively rose-tinted and the things we thought were so important would turn out not to be.

In the face of a real threat to our health, our livelihoods, our freedoms and our loved ones I’m struck by the apparent irrelevance of so much of what sucked up our energy, time, money and passion. I’m moved at hearing furloughed colleagues expressing love in their heartfelt: “May God bless you.” “Look after yourself” and: “See you on the other side.”

I’m gutted at the closing of the cathedral doors, even though our ministry continues. I am challenged by the logistics of helping to care for the most vulnerable. Three cheers for Light Project Peterborough and the housing team taking responsibility for this and for all those involved in getting food out to those in need and managing unpredictable supply.

My first ever carrot-related injury (just a blister- no actual amputation) was sustained this week helping make vast quantities of soup and we are dealing with an immense glut of date-expired grapes donated for the homeless. In order to prevent our guests from requiring more than their allotted quota of loo roll, some of the grapes are being turned into jam. Americans are apparently fond of ‘grape jelly’. It remains to be seen whether our guests are.

I’m alarmed at having to embrace technology in a hurry in order to offer public worship. They did not teach us this at vicar school! I was thrilled when I managed to explain over the phone to an elderly parishioner how to set up something called Facetime. It was only at the precise second that we triumphantly made video contact that I remembered that I was still wearing my penguin pyjamas!

So no points for preserving clerical mystique and the poor soul probably needs trauma counselling!

Yet even as our dignity is trashed and our certainties upended, even as our places of worship and conviviality are closed down, there is hope. Signs of the Kingdom of God are bursting out everywhere and not just because children are painting rainbows in the street! If we have to suffer a pandemic then it may as well be now. (Imagine this in November or January!) At least there are blue skies and daffodilly ‘trumpets of the resurrection’. At least in this season of suffering and death there is the hope of Easter; a hope that can be translated directly into this situation on so many levels.

Easter is all about the beginning of a whole new world but we may, like Jesus on the cross, have to go through hell first, particularly if, as predicted, the virus peaks that weekend.

Many people in our “woke” generations yearn for a better world of kindness, fairness and peace. Some get so carried away by the vision that they use oppression and intolerance as the means by which they seek to improve things – which rather misses the point! For the Christian the Kingdom of God is the ultimate endgame. It is a future time when we so co-operate with God and one another that there will be no need for politics or religion or competition, when the values of our human power structures will be turned on their heads and all will thrive. Apparently this is still some way off, but in the wasteland of selfishness, pride and fear that we have sometimes made of the world and perhaps at this time more than ever before there are beautiful green shoots of love and life and signs of God’s topsy turvey kingdom springing up everywhere. I hope they last.

When we genuinely honour and reward our truckers, hospital porters, shelf-fillers and carers as much as we have honoured our celebs and athletes and go on doing so beyond this crisis; when the air stays clear over our cities, the ozone layer repairs, the fish still swim in previously fouled waters and we give back to society and the planet more than we take, then the Kingdom of God will truly be in sight.

May God bless you. Look after each other. See you on the other side.