Learning to Take Heart

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Savior of

the world Jesus the Christ. Amen.

By now, it’s impossible to have missed the news that is around the globe: the spread

of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Since December of 2019, the novel virus, with no

current vaccine or therapy, has spread to at last count 125 countries. There are nine

confirmed cases as of Friday in the state of Minnesota, and over the course of the

last week as a pastor I’ve heard every thought under the sun about this virus: “It’s all

hyped up by the media!” to genuine fear for one’s health. When we begin to see

implications of safe health practices – with colleges and schools suspending classes,

conferences, concerts and sports events being cancelled, and local churches

cancelling dinners and lock-ins – this global pandemic begins to have an effect on

our local community. We each have our personal perspectives on this, and as your

pastor I’m not going to tell you what to think. However, I think that we can all agree

that this has become a time that helps us to think critically about the safety of those

whom this virus can affect, and how we can best mitigate until there is more access

to testing. In the meantime, I think it is important that we do what we do in the face

of other illnesses that also concern us: wash our hands, stay home as is possible

when we feel unwell, and clean and disinfect surfaces. I also think that it is

important that as Christians we remember to pray and act: for those whose lives are

disrupted by this – for the children who cannot go to school, for those who can’t stay

or work from home, for those who live in fear because they are immunocompromised. In this time, I believe it does us well not to panic or live in constant fear, but we can create space where we acknowledge that this is scary because it is unknown to us and currently beyond our control. It’s scary to not have any protections, even if it seems like a mild infection to many of us – because for others, it really is a matter of life and death.

So, my friends, what should our role as the Church be in this time? Our second

reading from Paul’s letter to the Roman church talks about what God’s relationship

to us can offer us – we live in the hope and the promise of eternal life, and we live as

a people reconciled to God and to one another because Christ has died for us. Paul

writes, “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that

suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character

produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been

poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans

5:3-5). I should offer a word of advice here: for generations, this passage of

Scripture has been used in ways that keep suffering people in their places: spouses

in abusive relationships, sick folks in the trenches of dis-ease, and mourners

carrying grief as a badge of honor. For centuries this text has been interpreted to

silence the profound weight, anger, grief, and uncertainty of suffering of any kind, in

the promise that “it builds character”. While suffering does transform us whether

we want it to or not, I think that there is a more faithful way to interpret Paul’s

words. We don’t need to be in silence when we are anxious. We don’t need to be

stoic about what we are feeling, or going through. God has given us one another to

be community here, to shoulder burdens together when they are too heavy on our

own. God has given us one another to pray on other’s behalf’s when we cannot

speak. What if we viewed Paul’s words as an invitation to live deeply for one

another? We know that there is suffering all around our world. There was before

and there will continue to be after this pandemic, and the coronavirus is illustrating

so many ways in which our society can and does suffer due to insecurity of many

kinds – insufficient healthcare, access to daycare, school, and work. What if, in the

face of this time we live in, we took our stories of suffering and shared them as a

way to help each other identify that we are never truly alone in the road that we

walk? What if, we took our stories of suffering and shared them to identify where

the threads of hope can be found? In sharing our stories, we build a more common

humanity with one another no longer based on an idealized image or a sense of

perfection but perhaps upon what is truly real: and then we can take our fear and

our worry and speak about where hope, love, and the very presence of God is found

in the middle of it.

My friends, today I invite you to take heart. There’s a lot going on in our lives, even

before the news of the coronavirus. It’s easy to become discouraged or disaffected

or apathetic with the state of our nation and world, and as the Church God calls us to

be anything but. Might we find ways in these days to love our neighbors in honoring

and good ways, and care for our own bodies, spirits, and well-being. Might we lean

into the community that God has given us to practice the things that we know how

to do: prayer, even without words, a kind deed, a compassionate and listening ear.

God has already given us so much, and God will continue to journey with us as God

did with the Israelites, through the ministry of Jesus, and with the early church. Let

us practice resiliency, and trust in what God gives us today: hope in the face of fear,

courage in the face of uncertainty. Together, we will arrive on the other side of this

still proclaiming what is true: God has redeemed and reconciled the world, which is

the most hopeful truth of all. Thanks be to God, my friends.

Amen.