Reflections on the Face of God
The face of God that is the face of each other behind a mask is the face of the ineffable just behind a veil. This is a time of great trial, and it is going to be much longer than what we thought back in the beginning of April. On Sunday March 15th, we did the work of getting every one of us into life boats; the ship as we knew it was under attack by a strange and deadly enemy. Everyone into the boats, and we did. Over these weeks, we have tied our individual boats together and we have witnessed the sinking of that old ship. Some of us have not made it, but many of us have. Here in our boats, our little zoom windows, our individual quarantines or small family bubbles, it’s like we’re all in row boats. We’ve tied them together and like a flotilla, socially distanced but together, and together we’re riding these waves. Friends, I fear dry land is not yet in sight. I fear there are more and potentially bigger waves to come. And yet here we all are, masked reflections of the face of God, here on the other side of the Jabbok Ford, and our life has been preserved. These little sometimes lonely boats that we’ve learned to tie to one another have saved our lives, and God is in the strength of the ties that bind us.
Over the coming year, we will build a new ship where all of us will one day gather again in person and yet also in ways not yet known because oh how we’ve grown. The old ship never really fit us all and certainly wouldn’t now; the inequities of its decks and the divisions it created were discomforts long overdue for discarding. That old ship built over centuries carried the sins of fathers who traded in racism and patriarchy. That old ship had too many decks where people were forced to reside never seeing the light of the sun and was powered by the engines of oppression designed to hold others back in order to get ourselves ahead. If it wasn’t clear in March, nor even at Easter, let us be clear that Pentecostal fire responding to the murder of George Floyd and countless others has sent that ship to depths of the sea. Some of our fellow citizens want it back, want to make that old unjust ship great again. It’s not coming back, nor should we let it; resurrection is about gaining new life, not about resuscitating what is dead. Wrestling with God through the night we will have a vision for new life. From our row boats, all together, it’s time we build a new ship, a new place, a new world where all be free.
An excerpt from a pandemic sermon.
