The pandemic has gone on for quite some time now, and it continues to feel as if we are in some ways living in molasses. Although many in the parish have now received at least one dose of the vaccine, we have a long way to go until possible herd immunity at perhaps 75% of the population with antibodies. That is the experts best guess, to be revised as necessary. (And I’ll be frank, who knows when I might get my shot. Fifty-five has never seemed, in some ways, sadly so young.) Throughout this time, I have heard from parishioners and friends in periodic phases of grief and sadness. There is a feeling of frustration and ennui, and grief of what feels like possibilities lost.
In the face of this, I find that today’s scripture is helpful with surprisingly a lot to say. The passage from Isaiah, from what is termed the beginning of Second Isaiah (because there were at least three different people thought to write under the name or school of Isaiah), has several passages that explain that God is both transcendent and imminent—or in more concrete terms, the ruler of all and as close as our breath. And this is something we know, even if only intuitively, but I think I can speak for many that when we spin our collective wheels in anxiety at various times that it is hard to hold on to God. God seems further away. This may be particularly difficult in such a time. It is not tremendously hard time in that we are not at war, and there is not a large percentage of people dying. Nor is it as if we have spiritual amnesia as when things seem peachy. Instead, we are kind of non-specifically vexed and we don’t know what to do with it. It is then that many seem to lose sight of God. God is suddenly off our radar screen. When God is off the radar screen, and we hit anxiety and stress and it is suddenly all too much.
Now it is easy enough to say, “well, we need to remember God.” Well, duh, yes, we do. But to remember God is to be a member of God, that is, to be in tune with God. It is not an easy fix, but there are ways to get in tune with God. As much as we celebrate the light coming into the world and the darkness not overcoming it, when we want to communicate with God, we could take some pages from the Gospel. When Jesus needs to pray, when Jesus needs to center himself on God, he does not pray extemporaneously or read from the Book of Common Prayer, as much as what is on your heart and our prayer book are both good fodder. When Jesus needs to be with God, he goes into the dark, by himself. The darkness is not without God, and in fact the darkness can strip away everything that is not of God. There is then nothing else to distract from God. There is just you and God, and what you choose to bring before God.
I like to picture that this time that Jesus spends in prayer with God is a deep well from which Jesus drinks. We know that Jesus prays, and by extension, we should pray, or perhaps we can remove the word “should” and better said, praying is a way to get closer to God, to have a conversation.
There is always a lot to do to follow Christ. There is touch and healing, being with Peter’s ailing mother. There is following the actions of St. Paul, being whatever it is that will bring people to Christ. Even in a pandemic, these are still the marching orders for a Christian– to do what needs to be done. BUT, if we are going to be God’s caring people, then we too will need to drink from the deep well of alone-time with God. We too need deep conversation with God, we too need something that turns off the monkey brain, the chatter our brains can generate that keep us siloed and anxious. I’m not advocating to pray as something else that we need to add to our list of things to do. That is not my purpose. But even with a great respect for mental health professionals, being the child of a psychiatrist, I suspect that for the majority of us, our anxiety is not an illness but an appropriate response to an exceedingly weird time, which is the source of our anxiety. [And if anxiety IS your illness, there is nothing wrong with that; I will pray double for you, for with the pandemic anxiety added to boot, this is a doozy.]
A few words about prayer—some of which I have said before—most importantly prayer changes the person praying. In prayer, Jesus allows him to go preach in Galilee. Our praying allows us to set our minds on Christ, and not on our daily anxiety set in temporal molasses, allows us to embrace the activities Paul puts forth, allows us to be in communion with God, in order to be in communion with our neighbor, to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ which is worth sharing.
The kingdom of God is relational reconciliation, between God and us. Prayer is at the core. Do not be daunted by praying. I will say that again, do not be daunted by praying. Prayer is the only form of communication we have with God. Prayer encompasses words addressed to God and silence to hear God’s answer. I would go so far to say that without prayer, we are much less effective at living the Christian life, loving our neighbor as our self. Without prayer, we become irritated and anxious, even without a pandemic. BUT we can only turn our lives to God, turn our lives over to God if we communicate with God. That communication, that prayer, allows us to reconcile and make our relationship new and trustworthy. It is with prayer that we too drink at the well of life, and that we too can spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.