I recently read Walter Brueggemann’s new book, Virus as a Summons to Faith, and it was exactly what I needed.

It is such a strange, unprecedented time. We are locked down here, as I suspect most of us are in some way or another. We can’t entertain or visit with friends in our apartments. Meetings and gatherings of all kinds are cancelled including Sunday Chapel services. I haven’t been in my church for going on nine months. We can’t hug our children or grandchildren or hold in our arms our newborn great-grandson. We have been asked to refrain from leaving our apartments except for absolutely necessary trips to drug and grocery stores. Keeping a doctor appointment has become a new source of adventure and excitement. The sense of isolation, separation from family and friends and communities that give life grounding and reinforce our identity, is remarkable.

In the meantime two crises rage around us. The Pandemic continues to claim the lives of thousands of Americans and we are warned daily that we are vulnerable, and that this virus is far from stopped. The second crisis, of course, is the most bizarre and dangerous threat to our system of government since states seceded and precipitated a Civil War. The President of the United States is engaged in a full time, all out, assault on truth and reality, claiming hourly, without a shred of evidence, that he, and not the clear and certified winner, was re-elected President. Millions of Americans believe him. Leaders of one of our major political parties either support his assault on reality or, by their silence, condone it. It all would be laughable if history did not remind us that it actually happened once, in Germany in the 1930’s. Nazi propaganda and lies, repeated over and over again, actually succeeded in persuading much of a nation to abandon truth and reality and their democratic system of government in favor of Nazi ideology and Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship.

So Brueggemann’s book was exactly what I needed. In seven tight chapters, exegeting and commenting on seven passages of Hebrew scripture and the historical context surrounding each, Brueggemann reminded me of the very basis of the faith I claim and embrace. Even in the darkest circumstances: Egyptian slavery, military defeat, exile and Babylonian captivity, political oppression, pogroms, persecution and Holocaust, God is present not only to comfort but also give and inspire what the author calls “relentless, uncompromising hope.”

Brueggemann’s friend, Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev wrote a strong foreward to the book in which he observed: “Many people are sitting with the stark awareness that the world we knew is gone. There is no going back. Humankind faces a new and daunting learning challenge. We are called to learn how to peaceably relinquish the old world and how to imaginatively give birth to a new world in which all life can flourish.”

That is the issue that occupied Israel’s prophets. The power and relevance of the prophetic tradition is that it not only announces God’s judgement but also proclaims that God is present, even in the midst of calamity. God does not abandon. God does not forget and because of God’s uninterrupted steadfast love the prophets promise that there will be restoration, redemption, renewal. That saving promise comes to God’s people even in the darkest tragedy, even in Pandemic.

Jeremiah, above all, does not shy away from tragedy and suffering. Brueggemann points out that more than any other witness in the Old Testament, “Jeremiah leans most deeply and most honestly into the disaster of his people.” But even gloomy Jeremiah can see a time of restoration – “the sound of festival will again be heard. Life will resume in its thick social richness.” “Give thanks to the Lord of Hosts” Jeremiah urges, “For the Lord is good: his steadfast love endures forever.”

Faith, trust in this God, Brueggemann concludes, means that we will become people of “relentless, uncompromising hope.” “God will not quit until God has arrived at God’s good intent. We, and all God’s creation will come to well-being.”

Until I read and pondered those words I confess that I was having a difficult time generating much of a Christmas mood this year. Much of what I love about Christmas is simply not happening…but just maybe that is exactly why the infant’s birth in a Bethlehem stable can become more meaningful this year than ever.

After all, he entered the world during a time of cruel political oppression and military occupation. His young mother had appeared to be pregnant before she was properly married. And then she and her betrothed were summoned to Bethlehem, 95 miles from their home in Nazareth to be counted in a Roman census. I’m thinking about that lonely journey a lot this year. How many miles did they cover in a day? Where did they sleep? What did they eat? She was heavily pregnant and presumably rode much of the way on a donkey, in itself a physical ordeal. It must have been terribly difficult. And when they finally reached their destination the only available lodging was in a cattle barn.

The Christian story begins in dark, difficult, lonely circumstances. Mary gave birth in a cattle stall. The Word was made flesh and came among us in the cows’ feed box. The first to hear about and celebrate it were from society’s lowest ladder rung, lowly shepherds.

It’s an amazing story. Shorn of all the accoutrements that have attached to it over the years, it shines as perhaps never before.

God has not forgotten. God has not abandoned. God is with us. God comes to be with us again. Thanks be to God