Last Week's Sermon

Well, everyone, here’s the coronavirus sermon. Every pulpit in the nation having a stab at it, so if this one does not do it for you there’ll be lots of others to choose from. Mine won’t be very biblical. I’m not sure searching the Scriptures to discover the whys and wherefores of pandemics is spiritually wise. To be sure, there are many pages that speak of disease, disability and plagues as punishments sent from the Lord, yet our Lord seems to have flatly denied that this was the case. As he once walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. (Jn 9.2) and ‘his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”’ Again, in the face of life’s unpredictability, he remarked brutally that without repentance, our spiritual fate is as unpredictable as our earthly death. “Those eighteen folks who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” (Lk 13.4) The Son of G-d came to heal, and we must not understand that he came to heal the diseases that he or the Father inflicted in the first place. God cannot be divided. As he went about healing, Jesus revealed the Father’s gracious face. 

This said, theology will not make you feel much better. 

These are anxious times but then again, what’s new? Anxiety has always been with us. I hate to add to the current fretfulness but anxiety has been humankind’s constant companion since the beginning; even great apes experience anxiety. Woody Allen –or is one not allowed to quote him in sermons any longer?—has made a career of portraying angst and neuroses. He is universally funny because everyone experiences unease. In Annie Hall, one of his characters, Alvy Singer, says: “There’s an old joke. Two elderly women are at a Catskill restaurant. One of them says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is just terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah I know. And such small portions.’ Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of misery, loneliness and suffering and unhappiness – and it’s all over much too quickly.”

Anxiety has been with us since toddlerhood too. My grandad, who was a cynic and lived in a grand, creaky old house in the woods, used to make fun of our fear of the dark when we visited. He’d say things like: ‘Boys, remember there is absolutely nothing in the dark that isn’t there when the lights are on.’ Then he’d tuck us in, kiss us goodnight, switch the lights off and add ‘Well, except for the occasional rat or two, and bats; bats come out at night as well, whole swarms of them blighters.’ You know what? becoming aware of our anxiety somehow made it less threatening; and in the face of covid-19, this is something we should bear in mind. We should become more mindful of our own anxiety. 

It is all too easy to allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by all the problems of this world, not just viruses. You may already be trounced by the many problems of daily life. On top of that, you are continually bombarded with news about societal, political, humanitarian, and environmental problems. You look at the picture of a fluffy koala and wonder if she’ll end up fried in a bushfire, dying of thirst or just eaten alive like most animals in the wild. There seems to be no end to problems. While you are busy worrying about mass migration and refugees, ping! Here lands a message about saving the aforementioned koalas or an email about elephant poaching in Africa. Then you hear about the latest famine or read about the latest mad utterance of some politician in a nation with nuclear capability. It never eases; and it’s therefore not difficult to see how this constant exposure to dire news suffuses everything we do and ends up shaping our minds.

If we do not become mindful, that is to say skilfully aware of this anxiety, it’ll eat us up for breakfast. Unexamined, it’ll make us wary of everything, even pleasurable things. So here’s my 2 cents: 

First: keep away from the press on this matter: you already know the symptoms of coronavirus 19. The rest is not really information, just bait to sell papers.

Secondly, when anxiety rears its ugly head, do not flee. Have a good look at it. What is it? What is it like? What does it feel like? What caused it? More often than not, when anxiety presents itself, it’s not because a new threat has come up, it’s because our guard against an old one has grown slack. When feeling anxious we must move beyond childish reactions to the feeling: ‘I do not like it,’ ‘Make it go away,’ ‘I don’t want it.’ We must take a look. If we do so we will see that anxiety, just like any other thought of ours, is quite transient; like joy, like fear, sadness or memories. We must become aware of this. We hate to see an end to joy and a beginning to anxiety, but joy also begins and anxiety also ends. All things flow. Like all things, anxiety has a beginning, almost imperceptible, it peaks and then it peters out. It is accompanied by physical sensations and images, by sounds sometimes, and generally none of them are real, and all are self-produced. 

It will peter out if you let it go. It is your mind that grasps it, plays with it, entertains it. This is why I so frequently preach about prayer and meditation: we must keep watch over our own minds and learn to become aware of the fleetingness of our mental states. We must learn to let go off of them. 

So let it go. Let it go. Let it go.

Or think of it differently if you cannot: see it as an invitation, or a bit of a challenge: not an invitation to weigh up dangers, a challenge to look deep into your own mind. We always live with uncertainty. Anxiety is a gift in a way, as it makes you aware that nothing has ever been certain and that all things have to be loved and enjoyed in their fleetingness, or not at all. And the greatest gift it bears is love for others: we are in this together. That’s why it’s called a pan-demic after all, something that affects pan-demos, the whole people. 

‘Humble yourselves therefore under the powerful hand of G-d, so that he may exalt you in time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. But you: discipline yourselves, be mindful, keep alert; your adversary, the Evil One prowls about, looking to eat you up. Resist it, steadfast in the faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering.’

1 Peter 5.6-9