“Where you stumble, there your treasure lies,” writes Joseph
Campbell. “The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of
what you are looking for. The damned
thing in the cave, that was so dreaded, has become the center.”[1]
The “damned thing in the cave” right now is the COVID-19
pandemic and it has become the center of our lives. We are all stumbling over it in various ways
– some much more than others. People of
color and economically disadvantaged folks are disproportionately impacted by
it. This is starkly clear in places like
Louisiana, where 70% of COVID-19 cases are African-Americans, who constitute
only 30% of the population.[2] This isn’t just a natural disaster. It reveals long-standing cracks and
inequities in our society. It is also
very clear in our city’s callous disregard for our unhoused neighbors during
this pandemic.
For weeks, faith leaders, homeless advocates, and shelter
service providers literally begged Mayor London Breed and her administration to
rapidly move them from the streets and crowded shelters into the vast reserve
of vacant hotel rooms. They are among
the most vulnerable members of our community.
Homelessness is always a public health crisis, but never more so than
now. We have more than 8,000 people in
our city with no place to shelter at home.
City leaders said, “It isn’t fiscally prudent.” “It isn’t medically necessary.” “We will make decisions based on
science.” Yet, more than a month ago the county’s health officer said that using hotel rooms was the best solution for
protecting the unhoused population. Beth
Stokes, the Executive Director of Episcopal Community Services, the City’s
largest shelter provider, told me that “the only thing that will work is hotel
rooms.”[3]
Meanwhile, shelter workers were left without protective gear
or the means to screen themselves and their clients, because the Department of
Public Health didn’t consider them to be front-line workers. Shelters don’t contract with DPH; they
contract with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, so it
wasn’t their problem. There was no
access to testing.
Then, last weekend, three shelter residents tested positive
for the coronavirus; two of them in the MSC-South shelter, the largest in the San
Francisco. The City continued to drag
its feet about moving people into hotel rooms.
On Friday, the Mayor announced that there were now 70 coronavirus cases
in the MSC-South shelter, 68 residents and two staff. Two of them are seriously ill; one has been
hospitalized. But the Mayor assured us
at her press conference, “The fact is we were on top of it.”[4]
Our city’s leaders were not on top of it. They foolishly insisted that hotel rooms be
reserved only for those already sick or exposed, putting lives at risk even as they
rightly understood that the rest of us needed to shelter at home. They hardened their hearts to the cries of their
people and prioritized budgets over human lives. I wish I could say this was due to
incompetence, but the City’s otherwise effective response belies that
possibility.[5] This was a matter of indifference – moral
indifference – to structural inequities rooted in a long history of injustice
that sacrifices the lives of the many on the altar of privilege and prosperity
for some. They just were not thought
worth protecting.
What is true in our City is only magnified across the
country, where the Trump administrations combination of incompetence and
indifference has turned the cracks in our collective life into a yawning
fissure.[6] But if this pandemic is drawing attention to
well-known problems, however frequently denied or ignored, it also underscores
the urgent need to address them. A
month into quarantine, we find ourselves at the entrance to the cave. We are tired.
We are brokenhearted. We are
afraid. Dare we go in? How could we possibly find our treasure
there?
Tonight we heard the story of two women, Mary Magdalene and
the other Mary, who went to the cave.[7] Our text says they went to the “tomb,” but
the tomb was actually a cave dug out of limestone outside the city walls. It was a cave with a large stone rolled into
the opening to seal it. It contained
what they most feared: the death of their beloved friend and teacher; the death
of their hope.
This friend died because he stood in solidarity with the
disposable people of his time and place.
He was executed by the state because his compassion for the vulnerable
and outcast, his tireless efforts to organize a movement to secure their
dignity and create a just society, threatened those whose privilege depended
upon maintenance of the status quo.
Jesus, their friend, was sacrificed by the civic authorities because he
refused to be complicit with a system built on the cruel sacrifice of the lives
of countless people, day in and day out.
Jesus willingly entered the cave for them.
The two Mary’s must have been courageous women. Sure, they were afraid, but courage is not
the absence of fear. It is the
willingness to act in spite of one’s fear.
It is the willingness to act from the heart – cor in Latin and corage
in Old French means heart – the seat of compassion. Compassion is the wellspring of courage that
empowers us to go to the cave. It took
Jesus all the way inside, and these women to its very mouth.
It took courage for them to go there and trust in God,
by whose power the stone was rolled away.
It is God whose power overcomes the fear-based barriers that keep us
from finding the treasure in the cave.
It was by God’s creative power that a cosmos came out of chaos![8] It was by God’s mighty power that an enslaved
people were liberated from the oppressive grip of empire![9] It was by God’s healing power that a people
in exile, a community of dry bones, was inspired with new life![10] It is God who provides the courage and faith to enter the cave.
When the cave was opened, the women discovered that Jesus
was no longer there; instead of tragedy they found treasure. In Christ Jesus, God is revealed, as God
always has been revealed, as One who goes before us into the cave, into the
place of fear and despair and death, bearing the gifts of reconciliation, hope,
and new life. The sacrificial love of
Jesus is the treasure, and it overcomes the power of sin and death.
When Mary Magdalene and Mary discover the treasure, Jesus instructs
them to tell the other disciples that he has gone ahead of them to Galilee to
meet them there; Galilee, the place where it all began. Jesus has gone ahead of them to prepare the
way for a new beginning. The stone is
rolled away, the cave cannot contain the treasure: it is always breaking free and gifting each
generation with the courage and faith needed to begin again.
This holy night, we recommit ourselves to claim this
treasure even in the cave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will enter the cave witnessing to the God for
whom there are no disposable people. Jesus
has gone ahead of us to create a new beginning in which we can repair the
death-dealing inequality and injustice in our city and in our world. May God give us the courage and faith we need
to go there, trusting that there will be resurrection on the other side of this
pandemic. Amen.
[1]
Quoted in Padraig O Tuama, In the Shelter: Finding a home in the world (London:
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 2015).
[2]
Lauren Zanolli, “Data from US south shows African Americans hit hardest by
COVID-19,” The Guardian (April 8, 2020) accessed online at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/black-americans-coronavirus-us-south-data.
[3]
Personal communication, April 9, 2020.
[4]
Julian Mark and Lydia Chavez, “’Outbreak’ at SF’s largest homeless shelter, as
70 test positive for COVID-19 – shelter to become medical facility,” Mission
Local (April 19,2020) accessed online at https://missionlocal.org/2020/04/outbreak-at-sfs-largest-homeless-shelter-as-70-test-positive-for-covid-19/.
[5]
Russell Berman, “The City That Has Flattened the Coronavirus Curve,” The
Atlantic accessed online at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-san-francisco-london-breed/609808/.
[6] Eric Lipton, David
E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael
D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti and Julian E. Barnes, “He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s
Failure On The Virus,” The New York Times (April 11, 2020) accessed
online at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage.
[7]
Matthew 28:1-10.
[8]
Genesis 1:1-2:4a.
[9]
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21.
[10]
Ezekiel 37:1-14.
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