Notes from a Sojourn
April 23, 2020
Forty Days
Today marks the passing of forty days since our churches suspended gathering in public for ministry.
Forty days.
That number, forty, reverberates through the story of the People of God like an active fault line in the crust of the earth. Just saying it aloud cracks open the deepest recesses of our collective memory as pilgrims of the Way – a people confronting God’s will for their lives and listening for God’s word in the wilderness. It touches a nerve.
There is no single defining significance to the number forty in our scriptures, but among the many things it evokes are new life, new growth, transformation. A change from one great task to another great task.[1] It’s the period of human gestation.
Whatever happens to us during forty days and forty nights – or forty years for that matter – we don’t come out the other side unchanged. Noah disembarks the ark into a world made new again. Moses descends Mount Sinai with a new law. Israel enters the Promised Land. Elijah hears that still small voice. Jesus can begin his public ministry.
What have we been doing these forty days?
In The Acts of the Apostles, we’re told that Jesus spends forty days with his disciples after his resurrection to prepare them for the new lives they will lead empowered by his Spirit. He’s preparing them for the future.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the future these days.
Just like those forty days after the resurrection two millennia ago, I believe the Risen Jesus wants to prepare us for the new life we are being called to live on the other side of these “forty days and forty nights.” The forces that drive our economies of consumption and waste will do everything in their power to return us to “normal” – to continue our former lives with haste and indifference. There will be forces just as strong within us and our churches to get busy again, to resume the intense calendar of church business we plan for ourselves in the name of Jesus’ ministry.
Is that what the Risen Jesus is calling us to do?
If we haven’t spent these past forty days confronting God’s will for the life of our parish and listening for God’s word to each of us in this wilderness, perhaps today can mark the beginning of another forty days for you and me to do just that as we journey to Pentecost – a period of gestation for the Spirit’s life to mature in us so we can be born again to live into the future God holds out to us in the Risen Jesus.
Colin+
[1] https://fathersofmercy.com/the-significance-of-40-in-scripture/
