Are we missing something? Surely the fact that more people are online than in church of a Sunday cannot be ignored? When the virus is defeated we cannot go back to where we were. The Holy Spirit, this Pentecost time as in every Pentecost time, calls us to turn tragedy into mission.
The many who go online to hear a word of God must not be switched off or redirected to the church up the road. They have assembled to pray, in anxiety, in fear, in expectation, in hope – who knows? They are in a new place of prayer, certainly new to those of us who dwell in pews.
Prayer is a place as much as an utterance of words. Prayer, the saying and listening of it, creates a chapel of the mind and spirit. When the Holy Spirit nudges us into prayer we are led into the presence of God. The presence of God-in-Jesus is as real in these new online chapels as in any sacrament, as in any church, as in any tabernacle. God does not do real absence. Jesus did not confine himself to Nazareth, or Galilee, or even Jerusalem. The whole point of Ascension is to tell that he is not here; he is everywhere.
04 June 2020, The Tablet
Topic of the week: A chapel of the mind and spirit
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