What's in a name?

A long time ago, we fell in love and got married.  Then we decided to start a family.

We two became three with the arrival of Jolie Liana - our beautiful answer from God.  You can read the twists and turns of her little story here.  Her name, we hope, captures something of that story - the beauty of new life, longings fulfilled, God's faithfulness revealed in the fullness of time.

We three became four when our Ezra Michael popped out on the kitchen floor.  His story we wrote about here and here  And we hope his name describes something of that story, too - how God is our helper in everything, big and small.

You may think they're a little "out there" (and, with all affection, I honestly don't really care) but we love those names.  They described the story of our lives at the point of each of their arrivals, but they also set a tone and a direction for our family life as the kids have grown and their colourful and vibrant characters and personalities have emerged.

And now four have become five, with the arrival of Shiloh Hope.

The story of our lives relevant to this new baby is of course tied up in the remarkable circumstances we've all been navigating these past few months.  Shiloh is our lockdown baby, born surrounded by people in masks, limited in who she will meet and for how long and at what distance.  She's being born into a world where people are living in fear of death and disease, in fear of economic collapse, or indeed both.  She's also being born into a world bubbling with discontent, marches in the streets, protests and counter-protests.  (The astute among you may have noted that Shiloh in US History was the site of the bloodiest battle of the civil war - we chose her name before these protests started but its relevance to this cultural moment is curious to say the least!)

The world Shiloh is being born into is dramatically different to what we imagined when we first looked forward to her arrival.  But of course, there is nothing new under the sun - history repeats.  This virus seems shocking to us but our ancestors knew waves of plague and pestilence as just a part of life in the world as it is.  These marches and all the spin-off and ripple effects seem new to us but uprisings of the oppressed and movements for change and even civil unrest have equally been a cyclic feature of human history.

When in first few centuries AD plague ripped through Rome, the rich and the powerful ran for the hills - self isolating in comfort.  The people who stayed behind were largely those too poor to have anywhere else to go.  But rumour had it there another group who stayed.  A small Jewish sect whose adherents believed fervently that this life was not the end, whose hope was founded on something other than their health and wealth in this life, who stayed behind to care for the sick and the dying who had been abandoned.  These peculiar people, who came to be known as Christians (initially as a derogatory term) appeared to have an ability to endure all manner of trials whilst maintaining hope - you might even call it an infectious hope. 

This Christian hope transcended the tragedies of plague and disease and even death.  And it transformed a misfit band of followers of a dead rabbai into a movement which today stretches to every corner of the world.

It also had a unique power and persistence in reaching outcasts and outsiders.  No barrier was too high for Christian hope to scale, no chasm too wide for Christian hope to bridge.  The first non-Jewish convert to Christianity was a man called Simeon - black, of pagan religious origins, and a eunuch (i.e. a sexual minority, of sorts).  And yet where human nature would emphasise difference, distance and division, the Spirit of God moved heaven and earth to bring unity and diversity.  (One might even put it that, from the very start of the Jesus Movement, "black lives mattered".)  The hope of the gospel was, and always has been, for everyone.

We all need hope - especially right now.  Hope is a virtue which is only necessary when things are hard.  You don't need hope when things are fine.  When you have all you need, maybe even all you want, you don't need to hope for anything else.  You need hope when the alternative is hopelessness.  

And hope is and always has been one of the things which should mark and define someone who has had their life shaken up by Jesus.  When St Peter wrote to some of the first Christian believers in the first century AD, he was writing to people who were being persecuted - people for whom financial ruin, physical punishment, imprisonment or even death were daily possibilities.  And he said that they should be ready to give an answer for the hope that they have.  In other words, this hope that they had in the midst of sorrow and suffering was a hope so luminescent that it was inevitable they would be asked to explain it.

In this time of upheaval a lot of things on which we tend to rely are suddenly revealed to be less stable than we had thought.  Particular jobs and indeed whole industries have disappeared, almost overnight.  Public services and cultural norms that we thought would always be there because they always have, all of a sudden look completely different.  Relational networks that keep us emotionally and mentally healthy are all of a sudden filtered through a screen and a wifi connection, straining friendships, separating families and distancing us from our colleagues and acquaintances.  Even our health, which we don't even think of until it's gone, is suddenly up in the balance.  We find ourselves calculating our odds, mortality rates, co-morbidities, risk factors.  These circumstances - tragic and painful though they are - allow us to see what it is we depend on.  What is it that we can't bear the thought of losing?  What is it that we can't cope with being unable to rely upon?

For us, we've been sharply reminded that when all else could be lost - hypothetically for most, but very tangibly for some - our hope remains.  Our hope is not in our health or our wealth.  Our hope is not in the fragile idolatry of particular politicians or popular movements.  It's in Jesus.  He is our "Shiloh Hope".  He is our hope that won't disappoint, our hope that assures us even in delay and deferment, our hope that finds us even in displacement and dislocation.

Shiloh was a place in ancient Israel where the people went to worship long before the temple was established in Jerusalem - it was a makeshift place, a temporary location for God's presence.  In this season where our rhythms of gathering in community to worship have been disrupted, and we've had to adjust to new realities of distance and separation from spiritual and biological family alike, Shiloh reminds us that though the "where" and the "how" might change, God is always seeking to connect with His people.  Seek, and you will find.

Shiloh was also a word spoken by a man called Jacob to his son Judah, which pointed forward through the generations to the coming of the great Hope of the world - Jesus.  It's meaning holds in tension the reality of waiting in the "not yet", longing for a Kingdom not yet come, together with the certainty of the Hope that will be realised "when Shiloh comes".  The promise of Shiloh was a promise that though there might be twists and turns and unexpected detours in the story, Jesus always comes through.

Our Hope is not generic.  It's not well-intentioned but groundless optimism.  It's not nebulous and unsubstantiated confidence in human progression.  Our hope is not in ourselves, far from it.  If anything these months have been proof again of both the fragility of our lives and the fallibility of our legacies.  Our hope is in a saviour who rescues us, in spite of ourselves.  Our hope is in the one who will one day draw all of history to a conclusion where every ill-effect is redeemed and every day of sorrow subverted.  Our hope is in Jesus, who calms the storms, raises up the downtrodden, binds up the brokenhearted and meets our sin and sickness not with condemnation but with reconciliation and redemption.  Our hope is in the one who stands in the middle of the plague and, with all authority, says "all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well".

Shiloh is coming.  Hope is here.  

Good Friday

It’s not good, is it?  There’s an understatement.

Death after death after death after hundreds of deaths.  Ominous clouds of fear and anxiety cover the world.  Vital signs on medical devices and financial spreadsheets crashing in tandem.  The lonely and the lost, the unseen and the unknown confined to their homes, to be seen even less, known even less.  A society already disconnected, having what few bonds of brotherhood that remain, forcibly severed by the necessity of separating our lives in order to preserve them.  It’s not good in the slightest.

And yet the calendar insists this is Good Friday.  Though the upheaval to our daily routines has caused the days of the week to lose all meaning, I’m willing to be convinced it may well be Friday.  But it’s not good.

I catch myself thinking this is no way to celebrate Easter.  And yet, as my mind wanders down that rabbit trail, I wonder if that’s true at all.

All of us, including the healthy, the young, the fit, the strong – those we’ve come to describe cautiously as “relatively low risk” – are sacrificing simple pleasures and freedoms we’ve taken for granted our whole lives.  And we do so not principally for our own sake (though in part, we do) but mainly for the sake of the sick, the old and the already-weakened.

Maybe, in some way, we can understand something of the Good Friday sacrifice by the one who had it all, who gave up his freedoms for people in desperate need.

Families are keeping themselves separated, parents from children, sibling from sibling, grandparent from grandchild.  Though it breaks our hearts, we’re putting distance between ourselves and those to whom we feel the closest bonds.

Maybe, in some way, we understand something of the Father and Son who, on Good Friday, turned their faces from each other and separated themselves for the sake of the world.

Frontline workers, carers, doctors, nurses and many others who receive even less adulation are putting themselves in harm’s way to serve and to save those who they don’t even know.  Not their mother, but yours.  Not their brother, but yours.

Maybe, in some way, they’re a modern parable of the Good Friday saviour, who could have chosen safety but instead chose suffering, to protect and to rescue even those who misunderstood, misrepresented or mistreated him.

Some of those frontline workers are not those who would have considered themselves heroes.  They are paid many times less than some others.  They are in jobs less sought after, careers less craved.  Yet when push comes to shove they are the ones deemed essential to our collective survival.

Maybe, in some way, they remind us of the rejected one, the discarded one, who on Good Friday became the cornerstone, the keystone, the foundation on which our lives rest.

Maybe, on reflection, this is a pretty apt way to mark Good Friday.

Good Friday was a day of mourning, where the spectre of death loomed large.

And as Friday spilled into Saturday, the noise faded, the people dispersed and all that was left was the stone dead silence of the tomb.

And then finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Easter Saturday stumbled, grieving, sobbing, into Sunday.  Resurrection Sunday.  Where from the tomb – the very notion of death itself – burst out life, bright and breathing.

Life out of death.  Victory out of the jaws of defeat.  A new way forward, when all hope had seemed lost.

In our home we’re a few weeks away from what will – probably – be a lockdown labour.  Our third child will be a daughter of the quarantine.  A CoronaBaby.

This Easter we’re constantly reminded in the most physical and visceral of ways that even in a time of death and despair, life bursts forth.

This Friday might not seem very “good” at all.  But on the other side of every tearful, fearful Friday, is a Resurrection Sunday.  

So even amidst the chaos this Good Friday, have a happy and above all a hopeful Easter.  There is always hope.  Always.  Friday is never the end of the story.

X