Yesterday the Swedish government set September 29th as the day the country would go to stage 4 of reopening. What that means is they’ve removed the recommendation for people to work from home, lifted the cap on numbers at indoor and outdoor events and essentially, to all intents and purposes, returned the country to normal. I had half-expected them to punt that decision to next year to see how the autumn would play out but I’m glad they didn’t. I welcome the news.

Sweden achieved some notoriety by avoiding the lockdowns that became de rigueur around the rest of the world. And compared with its nearest neighbours did relatively poorly in combating the virus. Although compared with other nations in Europe who went the lockdown route, Sweden doesn’t look too bad and certainly has not experienced some of the doomsday predictions of its harshest critics.

Early on, leading voices from the Swedish Health Authority said that this was likely to be a virus that we would have to learn how to live with and that it was likely to become endemic. In that prediction, it seems that they were correct. As a result the measures Sweden took were designed to be sustainable over a long period of time and be as minimally disruptive as possible to citizens’ lives. This is the opposite approach of those who have sort to defeat the virus who took routes of maximum disruption to hold the virus at bay, only to see the virus evolve and do what viruses do and become more virulent.

This most recent decision was based on a few factors. They expect cases to go up again but it seems that the vast majority of cases are among the unvaccinated and that means they believe the health care system can take the strain. In that case why not open up?

That’s not to say there has been no disruption at all here, there has. Gatherings reduced at one point to just 8 people and all sorts of things were put on hold. As a consequence we at Grace Church, along with most churches, went online for a season. Punctuated by short periods of meeting in person between waves of infection.

We were able to restart in-person worship services after the summer break but with limited to 50 people but now we’re glad to hear that limit will be lifted in just a few weeks time. No more ticketing systems (although that wasn’t without its advantages), no distancing, no capped numbers. We’ll be glad to regather.

Nearly every person I’ve spoken here has said something similar, that they’re glad they’ve been in Sweden through this pandemic. It can be a little disorienting at times because often people get their news and worldview from where they’re from and not from where they are (language often being a barrier) and so their responses to events are shaped by responses in the UK, South Africa, America or wherever. This led to some dissonance and for some to be more fearful than their Swedish friends and colleagues.

There’s only one stage left of the Swedish return to normality and that’s to stop the incessant recommendations to stay at home if you feel sick, wash your hands and so on. But if that’s all there is then although we may well already be deaf to it, we can certainly live with it. The government suggested though that if the situation changes for the worse instead of re-imposing restrictions they might instead give organisers the right to ask for vaccine passports, although that’s not their plans just now.

The disruptions we’ve faced have not been as challenging for us as it has been for other churches in other nations, there has been little sense of crisis here, yet we’re glad to have this opportunity to take another step back to restoring physical presence with each other in the presence of God at the heart of what it means to be a church.