1 “Our Pre-Existing Condition” a Sermon Delivered by Rev. W

“Our Pre-Existing Condition” A Sermon delivered by Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell at Myers Park Baptist Church On March 22nd, 2020 from John 9:1-41 We are most definitely living in trying times today. The coronavirus has radically altered our world. There are now over 300,00 people infected, and nearly 27,000 cases in the United States alone. More then thirteen thousand people have died globally, and it has claimed over 350 American lives. The world is sick and scared. We are sequestered in our homes trying to save our own lives and each other. The market has receded before -in 2008, we’ve been afraid before - after 9/11, food has been rationed before - during WWII, but never have so many businesses, restaurants, and churches closed. Never have so many people been put out of work. Never have we been forced into social isolation. We are living in the midst of the most unprecedented moment in 100 years. It is a time of great uncertainty and fear. The long-term impact of this virus is unknown, and our hearts break for people suffering around the world, our world in need of hope and healing. Research suggests that when bad things happen, and suffering occurs, human beings universally look for someone or something to blame. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but so far in this crisis it seems like everyone is playing the blame game. Americans are blaming China for not taking the steps they should have taken to stop the outbreak of the virus. China is blaming the US for starting the outbreak. Many Americans, including the President, have been referring to the virus as the Chinese virus, Wuhan virus, Asian virus, or even the Foreign virus, placing the blame on Asian people and fanning the flames of xenophobia and racism—leading to an outbreak of anti-Asian coronavirus rhetoric and hate crimes. The Anti-Defamation League has noted a surge in anti-Asian activities including racist messages or caricatures of Chinese people mocking their eating habits, accents, and hygiene. Some are even blaming animals like bats or pangolins for the virus. Many Americans are blaming the spread of coronavirus on the President or the slow government response. I’ve seen older folks blaming Millennials for not taking the virus seriously, and I’ve seen some younger folks blame their Boomer parents and grandparents for not taking it seriously as well! Everyone is blaming Gen-Z for going on Spring Break and naively saying, “If I get corona, I get corona! It won’t stop me from partying!” 1 The one thing we can all agree on is that there is someone to blame for the coronavirus crisis, but it is not us. That’s the dangerous thing about the blame game. When someone else is to blame it means no one takes responsibility. A Persian poet once wrote, “We can’t accept that everything that happens to us, is our own doing. We need someone to thank and someone to blame; so, we created the concept of God and the Devil.” A recent research study by Psychology Today suggests that when people are victims of disease, they search for someone to blame for their misfortune—and often that search to explain suffering leads people to blame God. We see this in the most detestable form in “so called” religious leaders who blame God for the outbreak of coronavirus! Roberto de Mattei called the coronavirus “the killer of globalization” and “a scourge from God,” and he reminded followers that “God sends tribulations to families, cities, and nations for the sins they commit.” Robert Jeffress, pastor of FBC Dallas, TX preached a sermon entitled, “Is the coronavirus a judgement from God?” and claimed, “All natural disasters can be traced to sin.” The ridiculous view that sin is the explanation for all suffering is as old as the Bible itself, and it should have been put to rest long ago when Jesus rejected the idea. In Luke 13, Jesus said, ‘Do you think because some Galileans suffered they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? Or the eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam fell—do you think they were worse sinners than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you! But unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’” Jesus was clear: there is no cause and effect relationship between sin and suffering. The passage we heard today from the gospel of John confirms his rejection of this theology. Jesus saw a man who was blind from birth, but his disciples wanted to play the blame game and asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?” Jesus rejected their assumption outright and said, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that the work of God might be revealed in him.” Jesus dismissed the possibility that sin could be the cause of the man’s suffering. No one was to blame for the suffering— not the man, his parents, or even God! Jesus reduced suffering to a morally neutral fact. Suffering cannot be explained by sin, and it is not caused by God. However, God can work through suffering to bring injustice into the light and create change, transformation, new birth, and new creation. Suffering breaks God’s heart, and God has a preferential love for those who suffer, which is why God draws near to the suffering in order to embrace them with love, comfort, and peace. 2 In 1947 Albert Camus published “The Plague,” a story about a virus that spreads uncontrollably from animals to humans and ends up destroying half the population of “an ordinary town” called Oran, on the Algerian coast. As the book opens, an air of eerie normality reigns. The town’s inhabitants lead busy money-centered lives. Then, with the pace of a thriller, the horror begins. An epidemic seizes the town, transmitting itself from citizen to citizen, spreading panic in the streets. To write the book, Camus immersed himself in the history of plagues. He read about the Black Death that killed 50 million people in Europe in the 14th century, the Italian plague in 1630 that killed 280,000 across the plains, the great plague of London in 1665 as well as plagues that ravaged China’s eastern seaboard during the 18th and 19th centuries. Camus was drawn to this theme because he believed plagues were concentrations of a universal precondition: that all human beings are vulnerable to being randomly exterminated at any time, by a virus, an accident, or the actions of our fellow human beings. The people of Oran can’t accept this fact. Even when a quarter of the city is dying, they keep imagining reasons it won’t happen to them. They are modern people with phones, airplanes and newspapers. They are surely not going to die like the wretches of 17th-century London or 18th-century Canton. One character says, “It’s impossible it should be the plague, everyone knows it has vanished from the West.” “Yes, everyone knew that,” Camus adds, “except the dead.” At the height of the contagion, 500 people a week are dying, and a Catholic priest gives a sermon that explains the plague as God’s punishment for depravity. But a doctor named Rieux knows better. He’s watched too many children die. Suffering makes no sense, it is random, it is absurd, and that is the kindest thing one can say about it. Philosopher Alain de Botton explains that “For Camus, there is no escape from our frailty. Being alive will always remain an emergency; it is truly an inescapable ‘underlying condition’” Plague or no plague, we are always susceptible to sudden death, an event that can render our lives instantaneously meaningless. Camus called this the ‘absurdity’ of life. But he believed that recognizing absurdity should not lead us to despair but redemption, a softening of the heart, a turning away from judgment and moralizing toward joy and gratitude. Therefore, we need to love our fellow human being and work for the amelioration of suffering.”i The disciples were not the only people in John 9 who played the blame game. The Pharisees got in on the game themselves. They assumed the man born blind was a sinner, and they went even further to proclaim he could not have been healed by Jesus, because Jesus was a sinner as well. When it comes to sin and suffering, we have this deep and powerful human desire to find a scapegoat. 3 We scapegoat presidents and political parties for our problems. We’ve scapegoated the Jews, Muslims, immigrants, minorities, and the poor for our sufferings. And whenever humans play the blame game it always has violent and disastrous consequences. As we move through the season of lent, the day and hour are coming when we will remember how everyone made Jesus the scapegoat for all their sins — the disciples, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the chief priests, the scribes, the Sanhedrin, Herod, Pilate, the Roman soldiers, all the people of Jerusalem. They placed the blame on Jesus so they would not have to face their own responsibility. They accused him of blasphemy and treason and condemned him to die on a cross between two revolutionaries. Camus called mortality our pre-existing condition. Augustine called it original sin. But I think our true pre-existing condition is our propensity to play the blame game—our human proclivity to deny our sin, deflect our guilt, and project our blame onto someone else.

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