If 2020 Were...
If 2020 were a song, a person, an ice cream truck, a math problem, a pie, or my favorite, if 2020 were a medical procedure (Drum roll please!) it would be a colonoscopy.
2020 may have begun with great optimism but quickly headed south. According to a rabid San Francisco 49er fan, the downhill slide began on February 2nd with that awful fourth quarter in the Super Bowl. Zealots among the group describe those minutes as something akin to an asteroid hitting the planet. Little did Kyle Shanahan know that his horrible play-calling would have horrendous cultural implications for all of us. Four days after the Super Bowl, on February 6 in Santa Clara, where the Niners now play their home games, the first known Covid-19 death was recorded. By early March, we thought the outbreak would result in a two or three-week interruption in our lives. More than six months later, we continue to reel under the ruthless hand of this pertinacious pandemic. World- wide, 800,000 deaths against 24 million infected. In the United States, an estimated 195,000 deaths anticipated by mid September.
One psychologist reports “I want out of my marriage” calls up from three to five cries of desperation per week to three to five a day. Couples who averaged thirty minutes together in the morning and two to three hours in the evening now tied themselves together every waking hour. People in close quarters get on each other’s nerves which at least partially explains the number of divorce filings up 34% over 2019 and a 53% increase in reported cases of physical abuse to children.
People refer to “the new normal” without a clue as to what it might look like. We enter and leave restaurants, shop and even walk our dogs wearing masks. “Somewhere someone is taking a shower wearing a mask, I just know it,” a friend posted on Facebook.
Many employers now allow work from home. Over fifteen million, including some of our family members and friends, remain unemployed without a hint of when their jobs might resume.
Images of burning, looting, and violence on the evening news remind me of those I watched during the Viet Nam era of the 1960s. Damage to property in Portland, OR exceeds twenty-three million dollars. On the weekend of August 22 in Chicago, sixty-six people were shot, five of them fatally. On August 25, three people were shot and two killed in Kenosha, WI as violence and demonstrations turned ugly as a result of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The NBA, MLB, and NHL suspended games as players united in protest.
When the Democratic National Convention met to nominate Joe Biden as their candidate for President, the common theme emerging through the speeches: the election of Donald Trump for a second term will spell the end of our “more perfect union.”
When Republicans nominated Donald Trump for a second term a week later, the dire warning: Joe Biden is a Trojan horse who will lead us down the slippery slope of Socialism resulting in the end of democracy as we know it.
In the early morning hours of August 27, Hurricane Laura battered the coast of Louisiana resulting in six deaths and an estimated 26 billion dollars in damages.
During the same week, a kick to the groin of evangelical Christianity — the sickening saga of Jerry Falwell, Jr., his wife, Becki and Liberty University. I’ve prayed for my anger to turn to something akin to righteous indignation but so far no luck.
I am tempted to repeat to Jesus the challenge of the religious leaders: “I need to see your credentials. How about a miracle to prove you are who you say you are?”
Unfortunately, Jesus refuses to accommodate me any more than he catered to those who challenged him to his face. “Who I am not what I do should be enough,” he implied when he told them the Queen of Sheba and the people of Nineveh would stand up on Judgment Day to testify against them because they had seen and believed independent of signs or wonders.[1]
I am uncertain if the young man was part of the merry band of religious leaders who demanded a sign, but if he wasn’t, he knew the drill. Some were his friends and mentors. Jesus intrigued him, but because people revered him as a theological VIP and he considered his reputation worthy of protection, he snuck in a visit with Jesus after dark when the roads were clear and everyone in bed.
“It’s pretty obvious by the miracles you perform that you’re a special messenger from God,” Nicodemus began. “No one could do what you do unless you were.”
“It takes being born again to enter God’s kingdom,” came the quick reply.
“And just how I am suppose to accomplish that — find my way back into my mother’s womb?” asked the man with two doctorates and a paragraph in the most recent edition of Who’s Who in the Jerusalem Religious Community.
“This is Spirit work,” Jesus answered. “God is so in love with this world he sent me so even if you can’t see it through your eyes, you might come to believe by seeing it through mine. And then perhaps you won’t come sneaking around in the dark scared half to death anymore. Come clean. Come to life.”[2]
I’m reading between the lines, but I imagine a quickening of his breath and pounding in his heart at that moment — he hadn’t felt like this since his first kiss or the birth of his son.
Whether that night or later. Nicodemus believed. I know because after Jesus died, Dr. Nic went with Joseph of Arimathea to pay his final respects at the tomb in broad daylight. From a professional point of view, not the wisest thing considering the witch-hunt underway, yet he considered it worth the risk. When he learned a couple of days later that some of the disciples had seen Jesus alive, he wept like a baby.
In his book, D-Day, Steve Ambrose describes the extensive behind-the-scenes planning by Allied generals as they prepared for the invasion of Normandy. From interviews with soldiers who participated, plans went awry on multiple fronts. Bombs dropped miles off target. Men landed in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong equipment. Many died because of the mistakes of fellow soldiers. Landing craft veered off course, ending up stuck in sandbars, some destroyed before reaching the beach. Many who reached shore could not locate their units. Viewed from the ground — bedlam, blood, confusion, death and terror leaving many officers convinced of the operation’s failure.
Above the fray, pilots witnessed a difference scene. Wave after wave of ships, soldiers and planes in magnificent array.
On the ground the appearance of chaos. Above, the look of victory. Months later, despite the initial feel of failure on the ground, the War Room plan achieved the desired end.[3]
In 2008, Judith Viorst wrote Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Any time now, I expect to see a new version of the book titled 2020 and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year on my Facebook feedback. to describe the feel of recent happenings.
Despite the appearance of failure as we survey events on the ground, our loving Father in heaven offers a reminder of heaven’s War Room plans. I often read familiar texts in paraphrases which enable me to hear them in a different voice so that they do not go in one ear and out the other. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Paul’s words in Romans 8 accomplishes that for me.
“The moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.....
“So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture....
“None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”[4]
Lord, we feel as if we are in the midst of invasion-of-Normandy chaos. Our jobs uncertain. Our finances high-wire acts. Our marriages hanging together by fraying thread. We pray wondering if you are listening. We want to believe that none of these live events can separate us from you, but our faith is threatening to buckle under the pressure of multiple stresses. Our heads nod in agreement to “nothing can get between us and you because of the love of Jesus,” but our hearts bend low under the howling winds of Hurricane 2020. Please cause your face to shine upon us and grant us your peace. Amen.
[1] Matthew 12.39-42
[2] John 3
[3] Tim Stafford recounts this story in Surprised by Jesus, (InterVarsity Press, 2006) p. 236, 237.
[4] Romans 8.18-39 The Message