(30) The Cure

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for The Cure, originally shared on July 9, 2020. It was the thirtieth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We’re at an odd point in the coronavirus pandemic. Have any of its points not been odd?

   We seem to be getting back to normal while the pandemic is getting worse. We are waiting for a cure, yet we act as if its already here. There are now 12 million cases in the world and 3 million in the United States. Cases in Arizona are up 165%, while testing is up 75%

   Has the burden of the disease and the actions needed to reduce its impact become too much for us? Have we given up?

   Maybe there’s another disease that has come into play. A more pernicious one.

   Many have pointed out that despair is the worst sin, or at least the most dangerous, because, as Martin Luther pointed out, nothing can be done.

   Ellen DeGeneres, BC, before Corona virus, addressed a group of about-to-be graduates in her commencement remarks saying, “Look at you sitting out there in your robes. Most people who are still in their robes at 10:00 a.m. have just given up.

   How many of us sit around in our robes at 10:00 a.m.?
   How many of us have given up?

   What is the cure for that? What’s the cure for despair?

*Galatians 6:7-10

   Our answer is not a Pollyannaish “everything is wonderful”, or even “everything is going to be okay”. It's not. People are going to get sick, and some will die.

   Our answer is that human life, in general, and every human life in particular, has a purpose. We are made for a living relationship with the living God. That is our present reality.

   One person who had studied the Bible’s book of Revelation for years summarized it in two words. God wins.

   We are optimistic about the future because we know that in the end God wins.

   We used to have a wonderful burger restaurant between our home and the church I served in San Dimas called Bravo Burgers. All of their take-out bags, coffee mugs and many of their food wrappers had a Bible verse printed on them:

*Philippians 4:13

   It was abbreviated to read, Phil. 4:13.

   I asked the owner about it and he said he put that verse on his goods because he was grateful to God for all he had.

   But, he said hardly a day went by when someone didn’t ask him, “Who’s Phil?”

   Sometimes our message, and in particular its source, has to be made more clear.

   One of the giants of theology in the 20^th century was a German theologian named Karl Barth. He made a speaking tour of the U.S. one year and, as he was about to fly back to Germany was asked by a reporter to summarize his theology.

   He said, I will in the words of the children’s song, “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.”
   How do we cure despair? With a telling of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.
   Rev. Robert Schuller, before things went haywire, was a promoter of a life outlook called “possibility thinking”. Sometimes one got the impression that he was trying to use this phrase as an equivalent of “faith” for a secular audience.

   He once told a story to illustrate the observation that optimistic people are optimistic no matter what, and that pessimistic people are pessimistic no matter what.

   It was Christmas and two boys were promised presents. A pessimistic boy was led into a room that was filled with wrapped gifts and told they were all for him. “Oh”, he said. “I don’t think I’ll like them. I probably already have most of them. And they’ll all break eventually.”

   The optimistic boy was led into a room that was filled with horse manure and told that this was for him. “All right!, he said. “There must be a pony in here somewhere!”

   Christians are ultimately optimists, thought I would we say we are primarily realists.

   The thing about this story is that it does not illustrate Christian optimism.

   We are not led neither to despair not to that kind of blind optimism.

   We know that this is God’s world and that in the end God’s will will be done.

   Ours is an optimism based in a living relationship with the living God, therefore.

   The cure for despair is to trust in God’s sacrificial love for us, and to act on the basis of that gift on the cross, the most real thing there is.
   Meanwhile, the weather is nice, a little hot but not too bad. The birds are singing, and all over the world, people are caring for one another. Life is fighting to continue.

   That life, in fact life itself, has been redeemed by God.

   That is why we don't throw up our hands and say, “Nothing can be done.” We open our hearts to build our living relationship with the living God and trust that whatever happens we belong to God, that nothing can take us out of God’s hand . We live in response to that love.

   I read about a young boy who found his parents after Sunday School. “What did you learn today?”, they asked. “We learned that Jesus said, “Don’t worry, you’ll get your quilts.” That was a new one to them, so that asked the teachers what she had taught that day. “I taught    John 14:26,” she said. “Fear not, your comforter cometh.”

   That Comforter, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit has come to us as streams of living water.

   It is the cure for despair.