All Saints, Dorval
March 22, 2020
Like last week’s and next week’s selections from the Gospel of John, this is a long, complex, carefully constructed story with a lot going on. There are many telling details that illuminate different aspects of how people respond to Jesus, and that echo prior passages (like Nicodemus’ visit to Jesus in the middle of the night) and upcoming ones (like Jesus’ death and resurrection).
But this doesn’t seem like the time to look at the details, however fascinating they are. This seems like a time to hold fast to the central image, of blindness and sight, of stumbling in the dark and longing for illumination, of not perceiving what is right in front of you, and of receiving reassurance and guidance from the most unexpected places.
This pandemic has us all feeling like we’re blundering around with blindfolds on. One of the many ways that the global response has fallen short has been the slow and inadequate ramp-up of testing, so that in many places everyone has been literally unable to perceive the virus as it spreads, at least until it begins to break out to sicken and kill people. You never know who might be carrying the microorganism and how it might make its way to you. This kind of uncertainty and lack of control has led to outbreaks of panic-buying and obsessive sanitizing, and has also forced whole countries to take on the type of broad-based “social distancing” that we are currently observing, simply because the necessary information is not available to know where the virus is so as to target prevention efforts.
We are, understandably, afraid; just as people were afraid of the man whom Jesus healed because his disability set him apart from “normal” people, and just as the religious authorities were afraid of Jesus’ power to heal and how it might disrupt their own control over society. We are afraid of something we can’t see, something that threatens our health and our lives, and whose effects will be profound and long-lasting, long after this immediate crisis is behind us. We long for the illumination of knowledge, of certainty, of knowing what will happen and whom to trust.
And yet, there are also many things that the strangeness of this time is revealing – perhaps not things that can be seen or perceived by the senses, but important truths nevertheless.
On Friday, I did a graveside service for George and Marion White, whom some of you may remember from both St. Andrew’s & St. Mark’s and Church of the Resurrection in the second half of the twentieth century. The only people present were the Rideau Funeral Home staff and George and Marion’s son Brian and daughter-in-law Denise. The interment took place at 2:30, which happened to be during one of the worst squalls of rain and wind on that rainy, windy day, and it was as much as any of us could do to stay upright while I said the bare minimum of prayers and the grave rapidly filled up with water. As we lamented the chaos, Denise kept saying, “None of this is under our control!” – not the weather, not the circumstances that prevented them from gathering with family as they would normally have expected to be able to do, not any of it.
So yes, one of the things that has been revealed is how little we can actually control. In normal circumstances, we are usually pretty good at maintaining the illusion of control. But it is just that – an illusion. When a crisis comes in our personal lives, often one of the most painful parts of it is having to give up that illusion and admit that we are not in control. So perhaps there is something healthy about being forced, all of us at once, to acknowledge that reality: that the vast majority of what happens to us is beyond our capability to control.
And along with that realization comes the realization that we are deeply interconnected. Although the virus has reached almost all parts of the globe by now, still relatively few humans have actually become infected – and yet, in order to help those people and protect the rest of us, we have already absorbed massive alterations to our daily lives at every level, and are preparing to absorb much more.
Economically, socially, politically, medically, everything each of us does affects everyone else. We are unavoidably connected; as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” And of course, this does not just apply to humans, but to the global ecological system on which all life depends. We are already seeing – there’s that word again! – we are already seeing measurable changes in pollution levels from the sudden cessation of large swaths of the human economy. How will we go forward from this moment, after this realization?
And once the illusion of control has been stripped away, and we have realized how interdependent we all are, what else do we begin to perceive?
Many things, I think, few of them visible to our bodily eyes, and all of them crucial.
We perceive what is really important.
We perceive how we can stay in touch, how we can support each other, how we can express our love for each other, in the absence of physical contact.
We perceive the nature and power of prayer: both the patterned recitation of familiar words of comfort, and the moment-by-moment consciousness of dependence on God for the next heartbeat, the next breath, the power to face the next minute.
We perceive what it means to exist within the peace that passes all understanding.
All these are things that we can perceive regardless of the details of our external situation, and regardless of how well our physical eyes work.
When Jesus found the formerly blind man, he wanted only to know who the Son of Man was, that he might believe in him. And Jesus gave him what he sought, and he believed.
Imagine that Jesus is seeking you, too, out in this moment.
What question would you have for him?
What answer do you think he might give?
And what are you perceiving in this moment that might have been unclear before?
[Long pause]
We belong to the shepherd who leads to green pastures, who is at our side in the valley of the shadow of death, and who spreads a table before us in the very presence of those who trouble us.
My prayer for us all is that we may perceive the nearness of God, in our interconnectedness, in our confusion and fear, in our lack of control, and that we may indeed rest beside the still waters, in the peace that passes all understanding.
Amen.
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