The Week of April 24th, 2022
>>>>>> Plagues and Pandemics<<<<<<
Sermon Noodles
Exodus 8:1-4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 2 If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. 3 The river shall swarm with frogs; they shall come up into your palace, into your bedchamber and your bed, and into the houses of your officials and of your people,[b] and into your ovens and your kneading bowls. 4 The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials.’”
One of the things that strikes me about the story of the ten plagues in Egypt is how stubborn people in power can be. Did Pharoah learn anything as ten different plagues made his people suffer?
What have you learned during the coronavirus pandemic? Has the pandemic softened your heart, or like Pharoah, hardened your heart? Maybe it is a little of both?
We would do well to be attentive to the fear and anxiety in our hearts. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann notes that Pharoah created his empire based on fear, anxiety, and physical and emotional violence. Living in that kind of culture hardens your heart.
The baseline health of our culture is getting worse not better. Average life span for non-hispanic white people is declining. Before the pandemic dropped 1.5 years, basically from 78 to 76.5, the largest decline since WWII. For the non-hispanic black person it is even worse, an almost 3 year decline before the pandemic from 74.9. Add an estimated 11% increase from the pandemic. Compare that with Scandinavian countries where the average life span is 83.
The pandemic exposed the enormous shadow work problem we have in this country
The shadow is a term psychologist Carl Jung invented to describe the part of us that we disown—that we refuse to believe is a part of us—and we render it “unconscious.” It can be the dark side of our personalities—negative impulses such as rage, greed, envy, selfishness, a lust for power. It can also be positive—which is called the “golden shadow”—our own creativity, wonder, compassion, and beauty for example. The problem is we deny the shadow of us and refuse to believe what is true about us. Perhaps one example might be the state of Texas. Texas enacted restrictive abortion laws and considers itself to be Pro-life. However, Texas also executes five times more of its citizens than any state in the union and is hardly Pro-life. Very shadowy.
The insidious thing about the Shadow is that not only do we deny it even exists, “That is not me” like Peter, but we PROJECT our shadow unto others. As the saying goes, “We hate our sin we see in others, but deny it is our sin we see.” The point being, we have been exposed to the coronavirus, and the coronavirus exposed us.