Wednesday, September 9, 2020
This past Sunday Old First Church “reopened.” It’s a funny word: reopen. Yes, six months ago the Governor’s lockdown order and our fear of people contracting the coronavirus, we closed the doors. I deliberately chose the word “fear” to describe our feelings as a community. Mid-March was not a time of concern; it was a time of fear.
The media carried stories of hospital rooms filled to overflowing, shutting relatives off from the infected – note the use of the word “infected” here, and compared Covid-19 to the plague. We had one advantage that our ancestors did not: we knew the cause but the response was the same. We could not touch or get close to the sick and the dying.
And like in the times of medieval and other modern plagues of illnesses that kill, the rich fled the crowded cities and retreated to the countryside. Although they may not lie on couches inlaid with ivory as in the time of Amos, by in large they have fared better than the poor and the minority health care workers who continue to struggle at this time.
Prayer for the Day
O God, we often live as if we do not need you,
Pretending that life is what we make it.
In those moments when we experience your Presence,
We act as if it was given for ourselves alone.
Awaken us by your spirit and your demand for righteousness
Leading us to find opportunities to do justice.
In the name of him who teaches us a new way to live,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen
Thoughts for the Day
If one really wants to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected––those precisely who need the law’s protection most! And listens to their testimony.
James Baldwin, American writer (1924–1987)
Oh, I am arm’d with more than complete steel. The justice of my quarrel.
Aphra Behn, early English playwright (1649–1689)
The nations have sunk in the pit that they made;
in the net that they hid has their own foot has been caught.
The Lord has made known, and has executed judgment;
the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands.
Psalm 9:15–16