Preaching One Year Into the Pandemic
UN COVID-19 Response
A year ago at this time, I was attending what would be my last trip for the foreseeable future.
Within a couple weeks of the conference, calls were made, emails sent, texts received: some of the conference attendees had contracted COVID-19, some desperately so.
Like a complex, transcontinental domino matrix—the first few decision dominoes knocking over their adjacent ones, then branching—other conferences were cancelled, then vacations were cancelled, then weddings, then graduations—then everything was cancelled.
We may be living in a society some label a “cancel culture,” but whether or not that’s true, it’s certainly been a “cancel year.”
Like you, I have a long list of events that were cancelled because of COVID-19. Experiences I’ll never get back.
Once-in-a-lifetime chances come and gone for good.
I grieve those and will always feel their loss.
Others have lost still more.
Some have lost their health from the still-mysterious “long-haul” effects of the disease, some have lost their livelihoods, and some, most crushing of all, have lost their loved ones.
Now What? Lament? Joy?
As the U.S. comes ‘round to the end of its first year managing the pandemic, I hear frustration among preachers with each other.
The source of tension? A disagreement about the best ratio between preaching lament and joy.
Some preachers see lament as necessary. They’re trying to assist their parishioners to feel the grief of their losses, to find healing through their talking and tears.
Other preachers believe that encouragement to grieve negates the joy of the resurrection.
Moreover, they say, the pandemic isn’t going to last forever. There is hope, and the truth is, the pandemic has not been 100% bad. There have been many unexpected blessings that deserve to be acknowledged too.
To all preachers everywhere, I say: Yes.
There is the need for lament, and there is the need for joy.
And if we’re not sure about the best ratio and feeling a little suspicious of our colleagues who tip a bit more toward one side than the other, then probably our parishioners are feeling the same way about each other—and us.
We’re all filled with conflicting emotions, conflicting views on the pandemic, and conflicting preferences about how we heal and move forward.
I don’t think there is a best or right ratio.
I think we’re just human, containing a sometimes-simmering, sometimes boiling-over cauldron of emotions, which is sometimes lament, and sometimes joy, and lots of everything in between.
After the year we’ve had, how could it be otherwise?
It’s into this muddy, murky, shining, made-in-the-image-of-God, emotional soup of humanity that I offer a couple of preaching suggestions.
Each grieves differently—at the same time, at their own pace, all at once
You know this from pastoral care.
Some grieve best alone, others best when surrounded by shoulders to cry on.
Some keen loudly, others weep silently, some remain stoic.
Some are gratefully distracted by daily life, others can barely remember they’ve got to eat.
Each reaction can be different and all felt by one person depending on how they uniquely experience their loss.
Grief manifests itself according to its own rules, whims, and moods.
Usually our losses are spread out over time, and one at a time.
The pandemic, however, has compressed countless losses, and countless types of losses, into a very short period of time.
Which means right now, every single one of us is tending to the needs of the multiple grieving personalities within us, and in those we serve.
Some of our personalities want the equivalent of a full-blown wake, funeral, burial, with a thirty-foot tall granite obelisk to mark the spot, and who need to talk about the loss ad infinitum.
Some of our personalities refuse to discuss even the need for a ritual, will never mention the loss again, and will snap impatiently at those who dare to mention theirs.
While at the same time, some of our personalities are still in shock and numb, and have no idea what they need or when. All they know is they want this to be over with and to get back to “normal.”
All these personalities are wrestling with each other trying to come out on top, or praying to be left alone.
So, yeah.
This is us.
Humanity.
Preach that this is, in fact, what it means to be human.
Wonderfully, marvelously, messily, courageously, vulnerably human.
This is what it means to live in a place that’s just a little lower than the angels.
To be this human is hard, and it’s blessed, and it’s awesome—because this, this! is what God chose to become.
So, again, yeah.
And wow.
Preach the Faith that is in You
What allows you to claim with integrity, “Even when we go to the grave we make our song 'Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia?’”
What allows you to pray (literally or in spirit) this portion of the Eucharistic prayer, “…that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to you, O God?”
Here’s what it is for me.
Yes, there is hope, and yes, we will go on by God’s grace.
But hope does not pretend that the rituals, trips, and events we will craft after the pandemic to substitute for the ones we missed during it, will always and only be substitutes.
Yes, there is joy that is not dependent on circumstance, not even the worst of circumstances, because joy never papers over sorrow.
Yes, there is resurrection.
But resurrection is only accessed because death happens first, and death is permanent, and won’t be cancelled, avoided, or fixed.
Yes, there have been unforeseen blessings during the pandemic for which there is reason to be profoundly grateful.
But those blessings do not negate the price we paid to get them; they will always live hand in hand.
Yes, all shall be well, and it is well already because there is no place God won’t go with us.
Even when it feels like we descend to the depths of Sheol in grief so deep we fear we’ll never rise again, or we do rise to the heights of joy because we are finally vaccinated and our loved ones are finally vaccinated, and we are finally holding onto and hugging each other for dear life, and our hearts are so tight because they are finally filled to bursting not with grief but with so much joy that we can hardly stand it—always God goes with us.
Wherever our multiple grieving, faithful, grateful, joyful personalities take us, we never go alone.
God is. Always. And thus, so are we.
What is the faith that is in you?
Preach that.
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