‘Things Fall Apart – the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’

 Holy Week Reflection

 The Jewish people had a framework for understanding the world and most importantly their relationship with God and with one another. They had the Law and the Prophets and yet at various points in their history they were radically challenged by the events that occurred in their communal history. The deliverance from the hands of the Egyptians became a foundational narrative for them about God’s ability to save. They were not a people unused to suffering, unused to war, unused to persecution and these experiences led them as a people to expect from their God – compassion, mercy and most importantly deliverance. They could understand their sufferings in various ways, they could attribute them to their own sin and waywardness, but at the centre of their faith was a belief that God had established a covenant with them and that he would be faithful even if they were faithless.

Jesus came into this history as a possible Messiah, as the Anointed One who would perhaps fulfil the expectations of the Jewish people concerning the redemption of Israel. He cured and healed, he taught with authority, he even raised the dead to life and yet, at the last Jesus did something unexpected.

For Jesus’ disciples and followers, the death of Jesus was real – his crucifixion the most utter betrayal of all their hopes concerning Jesus as the Messiah, the Anointed One. He had let them down – he had failed. We often look to the narratives of Holy Week and focus on Peter’s denial or Judas’ betrayal – but for the disciples it was Jesus’ failure that was most real – they were left desolate, frightened, brought face to face with the religious and secular authorities of their day – brought into conflict with real power – power that had the ability to destroy and their leader had been destroyed: killed, crucified. No wonder they hid after his death. Jesus had promised so much and in the end delivered so little.

Can you think of a time when you felt that God had let you down, when he had failed? When did you last ask God - why? Why me, why this, why now? When did you last feel that God’s promises to you had been betrayed?  There are all times in our lives I am sure when we feel that God is not fulfilling his side of the covenant. Christians can be guilty of thinking that being a believer means that good will come and that trouble and affliction will be averted. The story of the Cross tells us something else. These times of difficulty are the times when we have the opportunity to either keep on believing and readjust our understanding of God, or when we give up on God, throw in the life of faith.

‘Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit’

Jesus re-wrote the history of salvation. He re-cast what it means to be one of God’s chosen people, and in so doing he took his disciples and followers into the way of the Cross, the way of death. He takes us there too. When we are confused or troubled or when our world falls apart, Jesus is there at the Cross, telling us that wherever we may go, he has been there before – he has looked death and destruction, loss of hope and desolation in the face and returned.

Last week the great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe died, his most celebrated novel Things Fall Apart, narrates, from an African perspective, what happens when what is known and what is valued is destroyed by an outsider who threatens, challenges, or simply tells a different story. He takes the title of his novel from Yeat’s poem, ‘The Second Coming’:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

When things seem at their worst, we can expect God to transform the situation by doing the unexpected.