Sermon for March 22, 2020 - Lent 4A - The Rev'd Jeffrey W. Mello

I miss you all.  I miss the children in the play area and the choir in the pews.  I miss the hustle and bustle of the 9:00 hour when groups are usually gathered to learn more about God.  I miss coffee hour.  I really miss Holy Communion.  I miss gathering around this altar in a circle.  The silence in this resonant sanctuary brings up in me a profound grief for all that is not as it should be in the world right now.  

And, at the same time, I am feeling blessed and grateful.  I am grateful to have a home from which to work.  I am grateful for food to put on my table three times a day.  I am grateful that I am safe and loved in my home.  I am grateful for the acts of generosity and love the St. Paul’s community has shown to me and to each other in the past week.  I am grateful for technology that allows us to be together in a less than perfect way.

This Gospel story about the healing of the man born blind is another one of my favorites.  To me, there is humor in the writing.  This long gospel passage is mostly about “proving” what happened in the healing, after assigning blame for the affliction.  

Whose fault is the blindness?  What did he do wrong to deserve such a fate?  And once he is cured, he explains the healing multiple ways, to ears that cannot hear his testimony.  There is suspicion of the man himself, and of his healer.  The whole healing itself is suspect, as it happened on a Sabbath when working wasn’t permitted.

But, where is the rejoicing?  Where is the astonishment?  Where are the neighbors lifting up this man who they had outcast, and welcoming him back into the life of his own community?  Where’s the party?  You better believe when we are allowed to gather again, there will be a party.

It is easy to draw a parallel between this gospel story and the times in which we live.  There was, and continues to be, plenty of blame to go around.  Whose fault is this?  Where did it start?  Who knew what when?  

Countries are in a battle to be the first to develop a cure, or a vaccine.  Honestly, I don’t care who develops it.  I will just be so grateful to whoever it is.  

My sister told me that a colleague of hers explained that he believed that this is a judgement from God.  And those who believe that God acts in such ways -- sending pandemics to teach lessons -- have their choice of scapegoats who are to bear responsibility for it.  

Anxiety and fear are powerful motivators.  We can laugh that there is no toilet paper in the store, but the only reason that there isn’t any is because people are afraid there won’t be any.  The narrative of anxiety and fear makes the object of the anxiety and fear a reality.

But I don’t think the “Good News” of this Gospel story has anything to do with the details of the healing.  It’s clear that trying to get to the bottom of what actually happened, to whom it happened, by whom, and when it happened didn’t get the blind man’s neighbors to understand that the point wasn’t how he came to see, but that he did.

What matters is that the life in front of this man is nothing like the life behind him.  It is a story of life “before” and life “after.”

Conversions are hard to explain.  Healings are hard to trust.  Cancer doctors are cautious never to use the word cure, but remission.  People in recovery are constantly aware of the possibility for the addiction to rear its ugly head once again.  

Getting distracted with the details of the conversion or the healing or the recovery is to lose sight that the conversion, the healing and the recovery happened, and that there is a new life being lived that had once been lost.  

This time we are in will go down as one of those “before” and “after” times.  Like the weeks after 9/11 or the early days of the AIDS epidemic, we will remember the panic, fear, anxiety, blame, and suspicion that currently grip us.  We will remember the communities who were marginalized and sacrificed in our efforts to assign blame.  We will remember schools closed, working from home, getting laid off, closing our small business, talking on the sidewalk to each other six feet apart.  

And we will remember meeting like this.  

We will remember worshipping through the very screens we had been working so hard to limit our time on “before COVID-19.”

Jesus knew something about social distancing.  The man at the center of the story was, himself, a target of the practice himself, as was the woman at the well from last week, and the ten lepers, and the man with many demons who was chained up in a graveyard.

In each case, Jesus’ answer was to come close; to break boundaries; to touch, even to spit into mud and rub that mud into eyes.

For a time, we cannot be Jesus’ hands in that way.  We cannot put our bodies where Jesus would have put his.  We can, and must, call and write to each other and continue to be Jesus’ voice and heart in this time.

But that doesn’t mean Jesus can’t go where we can’t.  The risen Christ remains as close to us as ever.  Perhaps the miracle in this time will be that we discover through the disruption of our lives and the longing in our hearts that, through it all, God was there.  God was always there.  God is here, just as God told us God would be.  Just as God always has been.

Is there a possibility to put a hold on the fear, push the pause button on the blame, set the worry aside for just a moment to discover the miracle of Jesus’ healing touch on our hearts?

Might there be an “after” to this time that holds something better than our “before?”  I wonder what I will be able to see when this is over that I couldn’t before.  

Will I ever take going to a restaurant for granted again?  Holding a baby at coffee hour, or stopping on the sidewalk to talk with friends.  Choices of toilet paper on the shelves of the supermarket.  Doctors and nurses and teachers and grocery store clerks.  Playing a long, slow game of cards with my family.  

Coming here to see you all, in person.  Or breaking bread and placing in the palm of your hand. 

Will this time just happen to us, or does it hold the possibility of conversion, of “before” and “after” that brings us closer to God and to one another?  

Now, just as I don’t believe that God sends us pandemics to punish us, I don’t believe God sends them in order to teach us a lesson.

But how we respond to such times, how we search for the God who loves us in the midst of our fear and anxiety, how we seek new life as we walk in the valley of the shadow of death, that is how God redeems times such as this.  That is how there is conversion, how there is healing, how there can be an “after” that promises us so much more than our “before.”

I’ve said many times that we don’t come to this building to make God happen.  We come here to celebrate and make known that God happens in our lives all the time.

So, here is our time to celebrate the miracle of that truth.  Wherever you are, God is there with you.  

We will gather here again.  We will break bread again.  Until then, may God break open our hearts that God’s healing love might be set free.  

AMEN.

© 2020 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello