Deal Gently
A Sermon, Hebrews 5:5–10, John 12:20–33
I cannot recall a time when I was this tired. It’s been a year since we started experiencing COVID restrictions in the US. A year of some of us isolating and wearing masks while others of us denied there was a pandemic at all. A year of political strife that the US has not seen in decades or perhaps longer. And that’s just the background noise. We’ve seen the continued killings of black citizens by an increasingly militarized police force. Children are still in cages on our border with Mexico. Violence in the form of hate crimes against Asian Americans is on the rise…including a recent shooting in Atlanta, GA, leaving several dead because one young white man was “having a bad day.” And let’s not forget climate change. The list seems never-ending.
COVIDtide has me down, y’all.
It has me in a relentless blue funk. Do you all know of the Blue Funk in the UK? It’s that impenetrable morass of gloomy ennui mingled with a deep despair. Blue. Funk.
I’m in a deep blue funk and I want to get out. I need COVIDtide to end.
So, when I was given the scripture passages for our service, I immediately went looking for relief to malaise. And I found it. I found it in the person of Melchizedek, the King of Salem, and his strange story.
