Today’s
Scripture Reading (April 15, 2020): Jeremiah 15
In the M*A*S*H episode, “Dear Sis,”
Father Mulcahy is dealing with a massive inferiority complex. He just doesn’t
seem to be doing enough. Everybody is busy, the doctors are saving lives, but
no one shows up to the services that he holds on Sunday, and it just seems that
the Padre is the fifth wheel of the unit. It is not that Mulcahy spends his time
alone in his tent. He works hard in the Operating Room, fills in wherever he
can, but it just doesn’t seem to be enough. It is the overwhelmingly trivial
that seems to end up on his plate, including a blessing for a cow that is giving
birth to a calf that insists on coming out backward.
Maybe it is the curse of all
spiritual leaders. We know what we do is essential, but sometimes it never
seems to be enough. The question that we all struggle with is simply, “are we
doing enough to make a difference?” Are we good enough? It is a question that I
try hard not to deal with, or else I would never write another word, and never
speak another phrase. But we have the overwhelming sense that as hard as we
might try to teach spiritual concepts, in the end, people are going to do and believe
what they want to do and believe.
Recently, I noted in a service that Jesus
comments about wars and rumors of war, earthquakes, and even the chaos brought
on by the novel coronavirus seems to be more about the nature of life then they
are about the end times if we care to read the words in context. Jesus said, “You
will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed.
Such things must happen, but the end is still to come” (Matthew 24:6). The wars
and rumors of wars are not a signal of the end, so, according to Jesus, don’t
be alarmed. It is just the way that this life is. Jesus gets more specific
later in the passage. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the
whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew
24:14). Don’t look for wars as the sign that the world is coming to an end.
Look at the church. When the bride of Christ stands proudly declaring a message
of love and forgiveness to all who will come, that will be a sign that the end
is drawing near. Or maybe when we begin to work hard at this Christian message,
so hard that we forget about our end-times teachings and theories, that is when
the end will come. It was less than a week later, one of my parishioners
published a note on Facebook that maybe the novel coronavirus was a sign of the
end of the world. Sometimes it seems like spiritual leaders really don’t make a
difference.
Jeremiah must have felt that he was
fighting a losing battle. Nothing that he did seemed to make a difference; instead,
the people just continued on doing whatever it was that they wanted to do. And
God reaches down to his servant and tells him to lift up his head. Even if he
were Moses or Samuel, the people would still do what they wanted to do. The
lack was not his. And that is a message that every leader needs to hear. We
give our best, but that is all that we can provide. And we have to be content
with what it is that we can do, through God’s help.
At the end of “Dear Sis,” the cast of
the 4077 M*A*S*H gather to give their favorite priest his Christmas present.
They sing “Dona Nobis Pacem;” “Give Us Peace.” And Father Mulcahy closes the episode
with these words; “You know, sis, it doesn’t matter whether you feel useful or
not when you are moving from one disaster to another. The trick, I guess, is to
just keep moving.”
It is my prayer for all of us in the
midst of our disaster; God, give us peace and help us to just keep moving.”
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 16
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