See the video here https://youtu.be/XYgAqdSCHIo
Where are you today?
We’re all at different places. My place? I want to curl up in a ball into bed and lay there. I don’t want to adult anymore or mom anymore. I don’t want to think. Or act. Or do. This is how I am feeling.
And it is okay. Own your feelings. Feel them.
I feel them. I read John 11:1-45 through these feelings.
If only you had ACTED, there wouldn’t be death. There would have been a cure.
If only you hadn’t delayed.
If only you’d DONE SOMETHING.
I feel Martha. Deep. I learn about our politicians who were briefed on the coronavirus months ago and how they chose to sell their stock, but take no actions to prepare us. And I am angry.
I learn how our politicians were warned many times that we are not at a level ready to handle a pandemic, and they delayed.
And I see what we get to reap from the greed. The self-serving nature. The refusal to hurry and act.
Death.
Death.
I am having a hard time visualizing the level of death from COVID in the USA, let alone the world. I read about the hospitals in New York using trash bags as protective gowns. I read about the California hospitals considering involuntary do not resuscitate orders. I read about the cities and towns in Italy with no room for their dead so military trucks take stacks of coffins out of the towns after dark. I read about the abandoned nursing homes in Madrid, where elderly were left to die alone in their beds. I read. I try to think. I try to picture what is to come here. I try to hold faith in Governor DeWine and in Dr. Amy Acton.
Yet I still do the math. I still see exactly what they see. If we do not stay home, self-quarantine, and slow the spread of this… if we do not delay, we will lose literally thousands of people in this state.
Delay. Delay going out. Delay going out and delay spreading the virus. Delay and although there is still death, there is less.
On one hand I hold hope and faith. Hope that we HAVE delayed the peak. Dr. Acton tells us to expect it in May now instead of early April. We ARE giving hospitals more time to cure the sick and be ready for more. Faith – faith in the God-given science we’re using. Faith in my community to stay emotionally connected and physically apart. Faith in my God who will not forsake us. Will not leave us.
And yet, on the other hand, I hold sorrow and anger. Sorrow over the children losing their grandparents and parents. Sorrow over fractured communities. Sorrow seeing the soul pain in our first responders, doctors, nurses, and undertakers. And anger. Anger with the whole entire situation. Anger with everyone who didn’t realize how serious this was until too late. Angry still with those who place mammon, money, the economy over lives.
Mary and Martha are holding two fistfuls of conflicting emotions when Jesus arrives too. Faith – they believe in the last days, people will rise again in a resurrection. Hope – Jesus is here. Jesus can do miracles. Sorrow. Lazarus is dead. Their brother. And anger – where were you God? You are too late.
Jesus responds with just such muddled emotions too. Confidence that God will hear his prayer and respond positively. Sorrow at the sorrow of his friends Mary and Martha. Sorrow at the death of his friend Lazarus. Greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.
All kinds of emotions. All kinds of being deeply moved and having a disturbed spirit.
Watching and reading what is happening in New York and Madrid and Italy disturbs me. I look around and life is fairly idyllic right now. My husband works from home. My daughter schools from home. I work from home. We all share meals together throughout the day. It is a blessing we’ve not had in years. There’s no daily commute. No places to visit. But all the time to invest in one another and in slowing way, way down. On one hand, this is joy.
On the other hand, it feels like the calm before the storm. The deaths creep closer. A friend’s professor. A coworker’s father. My former professor. My husband’s coworker. Now MY brother likely has Covid-19. He lies in isolation, ill. And while I pray and fret over him my daughter has developed a fever. Is this a normal cold all toddlers get, or is it worse?
Fear. Grief. Anxiety. Hope. Faith. Trust.
Everything thrown in together.
We often focus on the miracle of Jesus. How, when all that was expected was death, Jesus showed a new way and God’s love shown forth – delivering life. We focus and we cling to that hope. Cling to that promise that death is not the end.
Yet in John, it is this miracle of Lazarus – Jesus’ last and greatest sign – that leads to Jesus’ death. Too many now speak about him. Too many think of Jesus as the new king. He is now too much of a threat to the system that thrives on fear and death – for he brings peace and life.
Again, life and death together. Again, hope and faith and trust giving way to joy and wonder and gratitude and also more fear and anger and grief.
Being human is being emotionally chaotic. Holding opposites in one body. A paradox. Angry and happy at the same time. Much as Christ was both wholly divine and wholly human. Both. Having many different emotions at once time. And that’s okay.
Jesus felt this too.
God feels this too.
The Spirit within us captures up all these conflicting emotions and prays them for us with every beat of our heart.
I feel conflicted emotions about our upcoming Easter. Will Easter still be a celebration if we are separated? Does communion – the Eucharist – still valid if we don’t share one physical loaf and take the elements at different times? What are we going to do with the flowers? With Sunrise service? What about Good Friday and organ music and … joy?
These thoughts give me anxiety. Give me fear. Give me sad feelings. I hear calls to open up church for Easter and I shiver – no. No. I cannot in good conscious do this.
In the words of Rev. William Brown, “Let us make this Easter profoundly memorable by celebrating the ‘empty tomb,’ by letting our sacred gathering spaces remain empty as testimony that lives are being saved in doing so. The empty tomb, after all, marked the beginning of Resurrection. Let’s linger over it this year; let’s revel in it… Let us follow the science as we follow Christ from the cross to the empty tomb that is emptied of death.”
A sacred space, emptied of death. A sacred space, where Jesus called us out by name sending us to the four winds to empty us of death.
Much as the Spirit drove Jesus into isolation to purify him, to cleanse him, test him, prepare him for his mission among the crowds… so we are in isolation to become healthy, cleansed, and be prepared to get back together again.
So what is our Easter plan? To stay connected as we are apart, I ask your help. Please. Take photos. Take videos. Tag me in them. Email me them. Mail me them. Let’s get together lots of snapshots of our physical lives apart during this strange time. And on Easter, when we gather spiritually, I will share with you all a video of these images from everyone. So we can visually gather and connect too.
May God bless the space between us until we meet again.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 