From the Associate for Music and Liturgy:

A sermon in face of Coronavirus for the Feast of the Annunciation, offered Wednesday, March 25, 2020

One rabble-rouser I follow on Twitter said this week, “Nobody taught us how to be priests during a plague.” Likewise, I posted to Facebook on Monday that nobody taught me how to be a theology student either.

It was our own Elaine Ogden who then got to the heart of it. She replied, “No one's taught anyone how to even be a person during a plague.” We don't know how to be parents. We don't know how to be pastors. We don't know how to be graduate students. We don't know how to be. We’re not only building the plane as we’re flying it, but it feels like it’s a 747. This may be the greatest uncertainty that any of us has ever faced, and the stakes are very high.

We need to now name the pain we face, to name the abyss into which we are looking, because, in scripture, when demons are named, they begin to lose their power.

Some will look at me crazy when I say this, thinking I am saying that if we just pray hard enough, then Coronavirus will just disappear. No. I am not saying this at all; I believe in science and I believe God works through science.

What I do say is that it is not a superstitious thing to say that a demon, a force of darkness, has come upon us. When Jesus comes upon demons, he demands to know their name.

So let's name some demons tonight.

I don't want to do it in the third person and say something like "some people think this" and "some people think that." That’s safe and theoretical and academic. No, this naming of demons needs to be more present, more immediate, more real. It needs to be personal.

I'll start with mine.

I am frightened. At times I am terrified. I have largely had to stop using Facebook and Twitter - and reading online news articles - because it was starting to traumatize me. I am the kind of person that has a kind of deep drive to get at what is true, not just what is factual. But this becomes a “curiosity killed the cat” type of thing. bI want to know what things mean. So I think I have to keep sucking up more and more information. Not just about Coronavirus, but about a lot of things. The more I take in, the more scared and confused I get.

And I am anxious. Even before I knew what anxiety was, I had it. That means there is not a time in my life that I don't remember not having it. When I get stressed, I usually imagine the worst outcome first. Anxiety, hello again, my friend.

I am angry. Oh so angry. Our federal government has failed us in its most fundamental duty: to provide for the common defense. President Trump lies, distorts, and misleads. The concern of the powerful in our country has often been to play down the crisis so as to protect the interests of corporations and the richest of our society. We are left, at best, with confusing messaging about what we must do. This malfeasance will bring about needless death. There’s plenty of blame to go around. While state governors and health officials step with courage into this collapse, others disregard orders, gathering in large groups for parties. Still others load their carts with 7 Costco-sized cases of toilet paper. Others try to sell 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer on the black market.

Someone will need to lend me some faith in this. Because I am angry and not ready to forgive and certainly not forget.

Today - tonight - we name our demons. Mine and yours.

Yet today is the Feast of the Annunciation. The day the church celebrates when the archangel came to St. Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus, and told her that she was with child.

This feast day has an important history in the tradition of the Church, for it has been taught that it was on this day - March 25 - that our Lord Jesus gave his life on the cross for us. Jewish tradition taught that great people were conceived on the same day as they died. And if you count nine months from today - I'll wait for you to do the math - you get to December 25. Christmas. This Feast of the Annunciation is an important feast for the life of the Church.

There are times when this day itself falls on Good Friday. On those occasions, our sisters, brothers, and friends in the Orthodox Church celebrate it with an very rare and rich liturgy that brings together themes of conception and death in a beautifully complicated swirl of symbols as death and life merge into one another.

While this March 25th, this Feast of the Annunciation, is not this year happening on Good Friday, it sure does feel like it.

Today we face our demons, we look into our darkness, and we lay over it the story of Mary and the Angel.

When we do, we name our angels. We name the messengers of God that come to bring us good news.

Tonight's angel is named Gabriel the Archangel. Gabriel the Archangel comes to Mary. And this is what he says, reading from Eugene Peterson's The Message. He says:

Good morning! You're beautiful with God's beauty Beautiful inside and out! God be with you.

Here is an important thing - when angels - and the word “angel” means messenger - when messengers come to visit people in Bible stories, they are not a friendly, soothing presence. They are not comforting, winged beings that float around on clouds. They mean business and have the most important information of all to share. They are God’s messengers. Messengers that by there very nature shake you up.

When Mary sees the Messenger, she's not happy. She's scared. And she wonders what kind of good morning this is. She wonders what is behind the message. She wonders how to make sense of it. As the angel appears to her and tells her all of these deeply affirming things, she knows that instant that her life will never be the same.

If those words of affirmation are not enough, there's still more good news coming. Here what the Archmessenger says, again as paraphrased by Eugene Peterson: Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.

And the Archmessenger goes on to say that he will rule Jacob's house forever - no end, ever, to his kingdom and the child you bring to birth will be called Holy, Son of God.

Oh my.

This news was complicated and it was confusing. It was good news, but it was good news that was going to overturn everything. In that moment, it was unfathomable, which is why we read later in the story that Mary had to spend time pondering in her heart everything that was happening to her.

There is a favorite Christmas song that goes "Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water? Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?" Does anyone know that song?

Well, that song kind of confuses us, because this scripture we read tonight says the answer to those questions is YES. She may not have known how it would all play out, as nobody knows the future. (And some very smart theologians, who have a lot to say right now, say that even God does not know the future.) But YES, she knew what was coming in all of its overwhelming goodness.

She knew. She knew that the whole world would be turned upside down, and that she would be right at the center of it. And her answer was YES. Now let it be with me just as the angel said.

YES.

I don't know if any angels have come to visit you to give you a message. But if they have, just like Mary, you will know it. If they have not, and you are looking for a message from God, pray to God and listen. I believe with my heart that God will tell you, because it’s happened to anxious and fearful and complicated me.

When God tells you something, the message will be unmistakable. It won't change the world like the message Mary was given. Nothing compares to that news. But it might change your whole life, the life of your family, the life of St. Columba’s. Who knows the bounds of God’s goodness and love for us that might come because you listened to a messenger.

So who are the messengers you can name tonight, both the literal and metaphorical?

These questions are thoughtful, to be sure. But if you’re like me, you don’t show up to church - online or in person - wanting somebody to tell you that God will say something to you someday or wanting people to just ask you a bunch of thoughtful questions, however good they are.

If you are looking for a message from God tonight, and I will give you one. It's from scripture, not from me, so you know I’m not just making it up.

Here it is: It’s John 3:17 - "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

Hymn 489 in our Hymnal - it is one of my favorites because it goes right to my heart - puts it this way:

God's messengers call us to find our truest life. I pray that they would show themselves to us, and that we would name them now in the face of the abyss. Within our darkest night, God kindles a fire that never dies away.

Remember this, God’s message always the same, even if it comes through different messengers, and it is this: I am redeeming the world.

Name your demons. Name your messengers too.