Making Meaning in a Time of Coronavirus Preached for Wollaston Congregational Church On October 11th, 2020 Scripture: Deuteronomy 34:1-12 Today we come to the fifth element of spiritual health: Meaning Making and Legacy. The Wikipedia entry for meaning making says: “In psychology meaning-making is the process of how people construe, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self.” [1] Meaning making is important for our spiritual health, we need it to make sense of the sometimes senseless things that happen to us. And we need meaning and purpose in our lives. To quote the seminary professor who taught my preaching class: “meaning is made at the intersection of the sacred story and the story of our lives.” This is my favorite aspect of spiritual health, it is what I work toward for us week after week. I try to preach and lead worship at the intersection of the sacred story and the stories of our lives. As Christians our sacred story is the Bible, those of other religions have different texts. Of course, the sacred is not limited to the Bible. There are many other sources that people hold sacred, including literature, movies, and the foundational stories of our nation, to name a few. Usually when I preach, I hope to have us all engage with the sacred story of our scriptures, using an approach known as “narrative theology.” The theology of story is not moralizing. Stories are not right or wrong. Whether a story is literally true is unimportant, and still we read stories as though they were true. During my first internship in the United Church of Christ, I was mentored by a pastor who is gifted in biblical storytelling. As a visiting preacher, she brings the stories of the Bible to life for many congregations. Whenever I told my mentor that I was stuck with a sermon, and didn’t know how to move forward, she would say “go back to the story, Liz, just go back to the story.” The story from the Hebrew scriptures that we read this morning is part of a BIG story, perhaps THE big story of the Old Testament. The Jewish people have made meaning from this story for generations, as they revisit it each Passover holiday. Christians have also found deep meaning in this story, particularly when going through times of trial and challenge. This story speaks powerfully to the African American experience, as it is a story of hope in dire circumstances, a story of liberation of enslaved people. [2] Civil rights activist John Lewis observed, “Slavery was our Egypt, segregation was our Egypt, and during the height of the civil rights movement it was not unusual for people to be singing ‘Go down Moses way on down in Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” [3] The day before he was assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the rousing “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech. He was drawing directly from the episode we read today, at the very end of the life of Moses. This passage is a story of meaning and legacy for the key human character, Moses. According to the biblical books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, Moses is a larger than life character. The narrative begins with the Hebrew baby in the bulrushes, discovered by the Egyptian King Pharaoh’s daughter. She adopts the child as her own, although he is the child of enslaved people in a time of intense persecution. As Moses grows up, he is said to have killed an Egyptian with his bare hands, having seen the man beating a Hebrew slave. At that point Moses flees from Pharaoh, knowing he is in serious trouble. He outgrows his youthful passion, tending sheep in the wilderness land of Midian, until one day God calls on him to become a leader. He is to go to Pharaoh and deliver the message from the Almighty, “Let my people go!” Moses is a reluctant prophet. But God convinces Moses that God’s power will go with him. Moses grows into the role, arguing with Pharaoh, and delivering the news of each of the 10 plagues that will afflict the Egyptians as they continue to refuse to let the Israelites go. Eventually the most terrible plague provides them with the opportunity to flee. Moses leads the people through the Red Sea, into the wilderness. The goal is to arrive in the land promised by God to Abraham and Sarah generations before. And yet the people wander for 40 years in the wilderness, complaining to Moses that they wish they were back in Egypt. At the end of his life, Moses finally leads the people to the Promised Land. He has led the Exodus, received the ten commandments and the law from God, and still he will not live to see the fruition of his dreams. As he surveys the land from Mount Nebo, he hears God saying that he will not pass over there. He will die before the people enter the land. At the end he has done what he was called to do. His legacy is complete. This is a larger than life story. We don’t learn much about the details of Moses’ private life. We don’t know whether he got irritable with his family, or cursed his own unique relationship with God. Perhaps he, like the other Israelites, sometimes wished to go back from the wilderness to the relative comfort of Egypt. The story of Moses is mainly myth. By that, I don’t mean “a pleasant story that is untrue.” Today we’re using the word “myth” as meaning a story that refers mostly to mediation and reconciliation. [4] The story of Moses is foundational for our faith. It is not a story of stark truth, so much as it is a story of reconciliation of God with God’s people. The message is: God sees the oppressed, God redeems the suffering. Myth is a polarity on the spectrum of narrative. The other polarity is parable. In the context we are using today, parable “is not about mediation but contradiction.” [5] The story of Jesus is mostly parable. The synoptic gospels, that is Matthew, Mark and Luke, are generally not other-worldly or fantastical. We see Jesus in danger and in pain, we see him tempted, we even hear of a couple of times when he gets irritable with his family. In the end he does not triumph over the ones who want to kill him. Instead he goes to the cross, and dies the death intended for a criminal and insurrectionist. Parables portray the cruel and unjust aspects of life, the perversity of human behavior, and our dire need of redemption. Parables make no sense in our understanding of fairness. Jesus’ death is on the cross is in no way mythical. But myth makes meaning of parables. It redeems unbearable stories, setting them in the context of God’s love. We begin to make meaning of Jesus’ story on Easter, when we meet the risen Christ. It takes the disciples a symbolic 40 days to process what that meaning is. Then they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and begin preaching in Jerusalem on Pentecost. Writings after the gospels, such as Paul’s letters to the early church make powerful meaning of the painful story: Love triumphs over death. In these COVID times, I wonder if it is “too soon” for meaning making. The coming of this pandemic makes no sense, in our understanding of fairness. It most afflicts those who are already struggling and in no way deserve it: the elderly, the poor, frontline workers, and black and brown communities. In the early months of the pandemic I noticed that TV shows, movies, musical recordings, and novels that I read, existed in a different reality. Everything was pre-COVID. It was a while before storytellers, producers and artists could find ways to gather and pivot to a new reality. I found the contrast jarring: people in movies eating in crowded restaurants, hugging and kissing in the streets, all mask-less of course. I really needed to read stories and see productions that reflected the current reality. I thought that it would help us all to normalize the situation and find our way forward. And so, I was drawn to the carefully recorded virtual choirs, to encourage us through the difficult times. Songs like the Priestly Blessing sung by 100’s of church members from around the UK, or the Quaker song “How Can I Keep from Singing” gave me a sense of solidarity and encouragement through the summer. I also participated in an educational program over summer in which students shared beautifully crafted story maps, timelines, of their individual COVID stories. One student imagined herself as “Rosie the Riveter” with the little red headscarf illustrating her journey as she juggled child care, home schooling and her work, in the midst of COVID. In our local parks, the city displayed posters of superheroes in facemasks, which read “No matter what universe you’re from, we’re in this together.” This is meaning making at its best. There will be more stories: COVID weddings, COVID births, COVID baptisms, confirmations, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. And of course there are COVID funerals, for those who die of COVID-19 and other causes. Making meaning of the deceased’s life with God is the primary function of a funeral. For now we have a little more flexibility to hold ceremonies and events, whether online, outdoor, or limited in-person and indoors. And just as we made meaning for a very different Easter, we will make new meaning when Advent and Christmas come around. Friends, we are beginning to make meaning of our COVID times, transforming the parable to myth. This is an ongoing process, as we discern the meaning of these times for our culture, our church and our individual lives. In an article on psychology, Crystal L Park, says “meaning making processes are central to recovery and resilience after a range of disasters.” [6] In this series of sermons we are discovering the elements of spiritual health that will lead us to resilience. And so, may we keep on making meaning together, week after week. May all God’s people say, Amen [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning-making [2] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/godinamerica-black-church/ [3] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/godinamerica-black-church/ [4] Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley, Might Stories, Dangerous Rituals: Weaving Together the Human and the Divine (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 13. [5] Ibid., 14 [6] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295685264_Meaning_Making_in_the_Context_of_Disasters
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