Sunday of Divine Mercy

Lectionary: 43

Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

Inevitably there will be preachers who rush to judgement and declare the current pandemic is God's punishment upon the Earth. It is certainly punishing like the hurricane that stalled over Houston several years ago, pummeling humans, livestock and infrastructure with high winds and flooding. It feels like punishment. 

If it were punishment for sin we would expect the guilty to suffer more than the innocent. But these events are more often shaped by the infrastructure we have built. Consequently, the poor who must live in crowded apartments and use public transport suffer more than those who have the luxuries of privacy and personal space. They're not poor because of their sin; they're poor because of their skin color or their inability to compete in an increasingly complex, Darwinian world. We cannot blame God for this one. 

On Mercy Sunday we remember the great compassion of our God. The gift is especially the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Although our religious and governmental structures used every weapon at their disposal to silence the Word -- ostensibly to protect helpless citizens -- the Father of Jesus has raised him from the dead and restored him to us. He shines among us now with all the more radiant glory. 

Saint John finished his Gospel with this extraordinary reminder: that we have life through our belief in "Jesus the Christ, the Son of God." Health and wealth are good things, friendship and family are precious, security and stability are vital to human existence, but these treasures mean nothing without our confidence in Jesus Christ. 

I have lately been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned, published in 1922, shortly after World War I. It concerns a bleak moral and spiritual landscape and a “Lost Generation." There is love and longing among the denizens of that prosperous and stable world, but no purpose. An aristocratic American couple marries expecting to find satisfaction and happiness, but they have no vision. Their marriage is only for themselves, to satisfy their desperate loneliness and youthful desire. They will neither bear children nor commit themselves to an alternate greater good. And finally, they’ll perish in existential frustration. Shakespeare described the same disappointment in Macbeth’s futility. For the spiritually bankrupt, life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

This coronavirus is devastating like a World War. In some places it falls upon a population that has lost its purpose, that insistently ignored the consequences of wasted resources and time, that assumed the world is as it is and will ever be. I fear the pandemic will remain with us until we have forgotten what normal was. By that time many will remember, 

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
When evildoers come at me
to devour my flesh,
These my enemies and foes
themselves stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me,
my heart does not fear;
Though war be waged against me,
even then do I trust.
One thing I ask of the LORD;
this I seek:
To dwell in the LORD’s house
all the days of my life,
To gaze on the LORD’s beauty,
to visit his temple.
For God will hide me in his shelter
in time of trouble,
He will conceal me in the cover of his tent;
and set me high upon a rock.
Even now my head is held high
above my enemies on every side!
I will offer in his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and chant praise to the LORD.
Hear my voice, LORD, when I call;
have mercy on me and answer me.
“Come,” says my heart, “seek his face”;*
your face, LORD, do I seek!
Do not hide your face from me;
do not repel your servant in anger.
You are my salvation; do not cast me off;
do not forsake me, God my savior!
Even if my father and mother forsake me,
the LORD will take me in.
LORD, show me your way;
lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
Do not abandon me to the desire of my foes;
malicious and lying witnesses have risen against me.
I believe I shall see the LORD’s goodness
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD, take courage;
be stouthearted, wait for the LORD! Psalm 27