While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One Foot
April 6, 2020
My daughter was ambling through one of the open air markets a couple of months ago (BC – Before Covid!) and she found a gift for me. It is sitting on my desk in the temple office. It is mug and on it is written, ‘Be careful or you will end up in one of my sermons.’ She ought to know…at least one of my children make it into one of my Days of Awe sermons.
A sermon is just a kind of story that brings the listener from point A to point B. At the beginning of any sermon the speaker wants people to ask ‘where is s/he going with this?’ and, at the end of the sermon when it all becomes clear, there is an ah-ha moment.
The world is filled with potential sermons. We have the sermons the doctors and nurses will tell of the hell of their work. The sermons the politicians will tell as they blame each other and set themselves up as the superheroes of the crisis. The sermons of the people who, in American society are seen by so many as insignificant and part of a servant class – the janitors, the cashiers, the pizza guy – who are doing more to keep this country afloat and upon whom we all depend. And the sermons of the dead – 10,000 and counting and of the hundreds of thousands left behind to grieve.
We are in the middle of sermon, though, and we don’t know when it will end. But this sermon, like all sermons, will end. The real question is what every speaker asks while writing the sermon and after it is delivered: now what? What lives will it change? Will people be moved? Will nothing change? Will anything change?
I don’t know the answers to those questions. But I have an inkling that things are going to change and often for the better. No, I don’t know what will happen to the liars, the deceivers, and the fake doctors. But I do know that in our synagogue there is an abundance of love and concern for one another. In the past week, I have made hundreds of calls and texts and emails and have received just as many. People are filling me in on others they know, on who is well and who is ill. They are asking me to pray for their well-being and I am asking them to do the same.
This sermon is being guided by an author we call the virus. But it is being written by each act of love and respect and honor. If we keep writing this way, then this crisis may very well be a defining moment when we realize not only how much we need each other but how much we love each other.
