An Englishman’s home is his castle, so the saying goes. If we overlook the gendered language for a moment, we understand that our homes are places of security, places of privacy, or to use theological language, of sanctuary and refuge.

As I reflect on the past 14 months of intermittent lockdowns, I am aware of how important our homes have become to us. For some they have genuinely been sanctuaries; for others, bereft of outside space and overcrowded, they have proved inadequate to the task required of them as we try to work from home, home school and keep householders sane. However, perhaps an experience we have all shared is that of our homes being invaded. Two examples come to mind, one potential (although for some, a reality), the other unfamiliar and possibly equally unwelcome. Our homes are presented to us as the unfortunate location where a deadly virus may choose to wreak its havoc. They are also the main conduit for a new form of communication: Zoom! Zoom facilitates a different kind of invasion: occasions when people I barely know enter my computer and from there my kitchen, my study or living room. Don’t get me wrong. I am very pro Zoom. It’s allowed me to retain and even develop aspects of my life, and my life of faith, that would have been far more difficult without it, and I’ve spent most of the past 14 months teaching English online to students all over the world. But there are times when I still respond to the Zoom experience as if it’s an invasion. Perhaps that’s because of its alien nature. Faces in square boxes, far more in my home than I would ever have invited or be able to accommodate physically, my limited ability to control who enters and who doesn’t…

The account in Mark chapter 2 of Jesus healing a paralysed man struck me recently. The miracle took place in a private home. Crowds of people gathered to the point that entering the home was impossible and the man’s friends took him up to the roof of the house where they made an opening in order to gain access and lowered the man down so that he was just in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralysed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” This unorthodox entry (invasion?) into a private home resulted in an astonishing outcome. Jesus healed him.

At the beginning of each year we are invited to take a piece of blessed chalk and to inscribe on the outside of our homes a series of numbers and letters that represent a request that Christ blesses the home. Could it be that our Zoomed daily Offices and other meetings perform just that function and that through them we are truly, and, perhaps in some way, miraculously blessed?

Alison Le Cornu is a freelance Theological Educator and Academic English coach. She loves languages, enjoys singing and pampers her two cats. She has spent the past eighteen years renovating her home…