PostScript: On guard!
The vaccines are coming! For truth’s sake don’t just go back to sleep (Mark 13.33).
Context
We woke on Monday to positive results for Oxford/AstraZeneca’s vaccine – if less staggeringly effective than the first two, it brings its own advantages. But vaccines alone won’t end our ‘suffering’ (v.24). In the UK we stare into an economic abyss. More subtle effects of the long-term loss of an open society will also demand our continuing vigilance.
Reflection
Democratic accountability has allegedly been hampered by pandemic regulations, consultations have been truncated, and online meetings have let world leaders escape the censure that would usually follow if conferences like the G20 were snubbed.
The American presidential election has revealed how pandemic conditions could be exploited to undermine trust in established electoral practice. Covid has torn away our comfort blanket of complacency in the UK to reveal hidden injustices, for example in education, and most dramatically in the way the disease itself seemingly behaves in BAME communities.
The disruptive effects of the disease on top of underlying ‘truth-decay’ in the US have opened public discourse there to wild but widely accepted conspiracy theories. In the UK we have allegations that delaying tactics, and hypocrisy have accelerated the decay of public trust in institutions.
It’s not all bad. There are hopeful lights shining through cracks opened in normality. Celebrities from BAME communities are finding new platforms and being heard: there is Marcus Rashford’s ongoing activism, and also John Boyega speaking up for ‘Black Lives Matter’ as a series of plays set in the British Afro-Caribbean community airs on prime-time TV. And at last transition to a calmer regime is proceeding in the US.
Will we manage to sustain the good effects, and shake off the bad ones? How will the government respond when the hardest hit areas and communities appeal for extra help? How sensitive and imaginative will the prioritising of groups for vaccination be? Will the Westminster government act justly to promote unity and dispel the impression of ‘bullying’? Will wealthy western governments remain true to their commitments to the fair distribution of the vaccines when they come on stream? Will governments fulfil ‘green’ promises despite financial perils? When we are again allowed public meetings, and demonstrations, will we recover our appetite for such events and for the important causes of social justice? Will we all retain the strength of mind to keep pressing for these things, even against our understandable instincts to protect first ourselves, our livelihoods, and our families?
This has been a pandemic. Europe, America, all the countries of the globe, are faced with comparable problems. Climate change is still there and threatening. There has never been a time when it was more important to lift our eyes from our immediate concerns, pressing as they may be, to look for, recognise, and promote the signs of God’s presence in every instance of concern for justice, truthfulness, and the peaceful co-existence of different communities.
Prayer
Perhaps a prelude to intercessions.
We all need patience now. But not a passive sort of patience. We need to be active, sifting the non-essential from the essential. We need to be searching our hearts to distinguish real injustice from the cruel results of a novel virus, that has no mind, no priorities, no sense of fair or unfair. We need generosity towards those we perceive to have suffered little, for the sheltered retired folk and the carefree, young as they are.
We need compassion on those who have suffered greatly, and are still suffering, especially those who may have been forgotten as we rightly think first of the front-line staff in the NHS. There is probably no walk of life at present that doesn’t have its special burdens to bear. We need understanding too for all those who now face the challenge of rolling out huge vaccination programmes here and across the world, for the demands that will be made on their expertise, their time, their sheer physical stamina.
Grant us that special kind of watchful patience Lord. Remind us that in anger we lose sight of the claims of compassion, of justice, even of truth. So keep us in your way, alert to the signs of your presence, forgiving of the failures of others, and ready to do your will. Amen.
Questions
- How far can active citizenship be conducted online or on the phone?
- Have you signed an online petition during the epidemic?
- Have you donated to a cause online or by phone/post?
All-age activity
At an appropriate moment in this service, or when it finishes, take a few moments to think of a change for the better that has happened in the pandemic, and give thanks for it. Then think of a change you regret and prayerfully consider how the situation could be improved.
Young people
In your online meeting consider whether the Covid regime at school or college has adversely affected your informal as well as formal education in citizenship or your ability to make a wide range of friends. Has any aspect of life under Covid given you better insight into the importance of community cohesion and/or ‘good citizenship’? How important has it been, do you think, that many ‘out of school’ activities. e.g. Scouts, Guides, Brigades have seen disruptions, as well as many community facilities?
Brenda Vance is a URC elder and retired university teacher living in Sussex.
KEY: 
icon indicates ways to connect faith with everyday life
Hypertext links to other websites are for the convenience of users only and do not constitute any endorsement or authorisation by ROOTS for Churches Ltd.
PostScript is also available via Twitter and facebook.
ROOTS publishes weekly lectionary-based worship and learning resources online and in two magazines. FIND OUT MORE.