Somethings you only appreciate looking back. At the time you were miserable but later you saw that it did you good … things like your mother making you eat spinach; walking to school in three feet of snow, up hill, both ways; learning algebra. (Even looking back, I still am not sure what good learning algebra did me.) Something akin to that happened to the first Christians. They underwent a persecution early in their existence, including the martyrdom of St. James – this only five years or so after the death of Jesus. At the time it filled the followers of Jesus with distress. However, when St. Luke looked back at the incident with the twenty/twenty vision of hindsight he recognized that the persecution was a great benefit to the Church. It scattered the believers and got them out of their tight little circle in Jerusalem. They started to spread the message far and wide. Without the persecution the Church would not have grown and multiplied. God can use everything, even negative things, even persecution, even the cross, for some greater good. Since we’re still in the midst of it we probably can’t look back on the coronavirus and appreciate the gift that it was to us. Too soon? On this St. James Day it’s like we’re still at the sitting-at-the-table-and-staring-at-the-spinach- getting-colder-and-colder-on-your-dinner-plate phase of the experience. But we can make some interim judgments about how God will use the pandemic to help us grow in faith. The scripture readings for the feast of our patron saint give us some things to look out for as we try to process all that we endured this year and a half.
First lesson, we’re all connected. The first followers of Jesus imagined that their circle of care consisted of those who looked and thought and believed like they did. It was only when they were forced out of their comfort zone that they understood that everyone – those “others” out there from Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch — needed what they had as people of faith. If there is one thing we have learned during the pandemic it is that what we do impacts others. Our decisions to wear masks, to keep social distance, to maintain sanitary conditions, to get the vaccine were not just about me and what I was going through. They reflected that we are all connected, part of God’s family. These decisions were in fact gospel decisions, reflecting the fact that I need to treat every child of God as precious, as worthy of my care. “Do unto others” and all that. As the pandemic winds down we need to keep that same awareness that what people are going through in our city, our country, the world, has a claim on us.
Second lesson, St. Paul reminds us that we are “earthen vessels.” We’re fragile, breakable, limited. Earthen vessels can crack, chip and peel when they are roughly handled. We experienced this fragility up close and personal when we lost people who died from the virus. It is never easy to say good-bye to those we love but when someone is taken from us before their time, when they still seemed to have a lot to give, the grieving is particularly difficult. Over and above the physical frailty in the face of a cruel disease, our identity as earthen vessels also played out in our mental health as well. Feelings of helplessness, loneliness, isolation, depression, and simple sadness at times seemed more than we could bear. Not being able to connect with people that we love in the midst of the stressful time was just adding more straw to the proverbial camel’s back. The pandemic made us sensitive to the vulnerability of so many people. The fascinating thing about St. Paul’s pronouncement that we are earthen vessels — it does not preclude our calling to reach out to others. We should not simply hunker down and protect our soft edges from getting bumped into. We are to stay engaged in bringing love into the world. The ability to do so proves that the surpassing power is of God and not from us. We might be earthen vessels but we can do all things through the one who strengthens us.
Which leads to the third lesson, like Jesus in today’s gospel, we are here at St. James not to be served but to serve. During the pandemic St. James saw the needs that were out there in our community and continued to serve. In doing so we are acting counter to the culture which judges everything according to the standard: what’s in it for me. There was a story in a book a few years ago called Chicken Soup for the Soul. It might even be true? The story teller said this: When I worked as a volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liza who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her five-year-old brother who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “Yes, I’ll do it if it will save Liza.” As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, “Will I start to die right away?” Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give her all his blood. Not to be served but to serve. Not what will I get but what can I give. Not what’s in it for me but what’s in it for we. That is the real less of the pandemic. That is what we celebrate on our feast day. That is what St. James is all about.