Navigating fear in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak
While you might expect it in a religious worship service or standing on top of a mountain, sometimes a moment of clarity hits you while staring at a grocery store display. Like many others not wanting to be without “essential” items in these early stages of coronavirus social distancing, I washed my hands and went into a grocery store to try to buy a bag of all-purpose flour and not touch my face in the process (the last time I had gone shopping, there was no flour left).
After having procured the only remaining bag of the now “other kind of precious white powder,” I started walking to the checkout counter. Along the way, I spotted it, something that appears every year at this time. And because I am a fully committed Judeophile, I always stop to look at it: the Passover display.
Passover has gone from having no displays in the ol’ Goy Emporium grocery stores of my elementary school days, to having relatively decent size spreads today (I say “relatively” because a single table growing larger over the years still does not compare to the two or three rows that Jesus-disguised-as-Easter-Bunny-chocolates gets every year at Target). I am not sure how Jews feel about having one of their sacred holidays get treated like a commercial opportunity. Perhaps it is just nice to get a positive acknowledgement of your religious tradition’s existence and not have to go to specialty stores to find some of the things you need for it.
In any case, as I stopped to look at all of the many cool items that shine a light on the versatility of the Manischewitz company (matzot, wine, grape juice, amazing chocolate-covered jelly candies, matzah ball soup, gefilte fish), a sober and comforting thought hit me. This commercially-produced grocery store was a simple, beautiful sign of hope. Few things implicitly signify hope quite like a Passover.
From Groceries to Worries to Passover
I am married and graced enough to have two little kids. I also work at a place I love with people I love; it is a place that ultimately depends upon God’s generosity being embodied through other people’s generous donations (I work for a church). Yet, I would be lying if I said I have not had moments of worry for the health of my kids and my wife. And myself. (Even if our kids remain healthy, which is statistically likely, what happens to my wife or me ultimately happens to our babies, too). I have worried about the health of our family members and friends who are older and about people in our community and around the world who have compromised health. I worry about a global economy screeching to a halt and affecting all of us, especially those who in normal times barely make it economically; in nearly any crisis I can think of, the poor almost always take the hit first and the hardest...and they keep getting hit. And, yes, I even find myself worrying about finding toilet paper when we run out of the Costco package I fortuitously bought the week before the call for social isolation came. So, yeah, my lucky middle-class self is being shaken a bit, even as I acknowledge my worries do not compare with 99% of what most everyone else in the world is having to deal with right now and has had to deal with even prior to all of this.
But there is this Passover display. It signifies hope. Awful, awful, awful things over the last 3500 years have happened to the people of Israel. Things like 2000 years of persecution by people of my religious tradition, where children and parents have had to watch each other suffer at the hands of those with social and political power over them. Things beyond comprehension like the evil that was the systematic torture and murder of the Holocaust. And yet through everything here is this display, a reminder that the people God chose to reveal himself to the world are still here and are remembering and participating in the fact that they are still here through this holiday.
Passover is a story of rescue from slavery and certain death. The sharing of its meal today and its enacting the story through the Haggadah not only helps Jews remember the past, but it also helps them share in it and propels God’s rescue forward. Seeing this Passover display was a reminder that many human beings have been through difficulties I will never understand and yet God’s faithfulness continues to shine and continue forward. I cannot help but believe that this story is ultimately going somewhere good.
The Problem of Evil and the Mystery of Good
“If God is all powerful and all loving and good, why is God allowing all of these horrors to happen? I know my more theologically self-assured Christian friends will be ashamed and disappointed by my response, but the answer is I do not know. No clue.”
I admit that by believing what I do, I am forced to accept certain paradoxes. I believe that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has already not abandoned and ultimately will not abandon humanity. And yet all I have to offer is silence when confronted with the questions of why God is allowing kids in Syria to die in war or why God would allow a nascent virus to roll over the earth indiscriminately taking lives and increasing struggles for those who will live through it. How is something like a Passover display a sign of hope for those who will die from COVID-19 and their families and friends? If God is all powerful and all loving and good, why is God allowing all of these horrors to happen? I know my more theologically self-assured Christian friends will be ashamed and disappointed by my response, but the answer is I do not know. No clue. So many individual stories do have gaping tragic aspects and elements that remain a mystery to me. And yet there is a bigger story that I take on faith will somehow fold those individual tragedies and nightmares into it and that the bigger story ends well with its destiny in God.
Passover is a sign that collectively, by God’s grace, Israel survives and keeps going, and with Israel all of humanity. Viruses and wars should not be trivialized; they create very real sufferings and there is no way around that fact. And there is nothing wrong with being afraid; in light of everything happening, it would be odd to not be. But as long as there are Passovers (and perhaps Passover displays in grocery stores), there will be people that will see them and hopefully have a little fear mitigated and gain a bit of hope in remembering that we are God’s and God will have the last word in human history. Who knew that a box of Matzot could mean so much.