God’s grace is with us, we trust, even in a strange time of pandemic which has prevented us from gathering together in person with anyone outside of our own households. The crisis time fell within our seasons of Lent and Eastertide, bringing us through Ascension Day (when, some people are saying, Jesus began “working from home”). Now following Pentecost, we’ve entered what Christian liturgical calendars call “Ordinary Time,” days of trusting that Jesus is with us, sometimes noticing him and many times not being sure if we do.
In this “Ordinary Time” people cry out for justice, reeling from and railing against the persistence of racism. We remember, most recently, George Floyd who had lived as a “person of peace sent from the Lord” (Patrick NT Ngwolo, pastor of Resurrection Houston, quoted in Christianity Today, May 28, 2020) and was tragically killed in Minneapolis. We remember so many other people of color who have suffered from racism for centuries in our country. We wonder, Where is God in all of this?
My mind goes back to those first post-Easter days when Mary, Peter, the couple on the Emmaus Road, Thomas, and others caught glimpses of Jesus. Mostly they were sheltered-in-place, grief-stricken, and living in fear of persecution in a land controlled by an occupying military force.
This year we have our own experiences of being sheltered-in-place. The COVID-19 pandemic, the economic devastation associated with it, and the fraying of our social fabric cause us grief and fear. We, like Jesus’s beloveds, have the opportunity to look for grace in the ordeal.
At New College we’ve been struck by the grace of our small group ministries: group spiritual direction, small classes, and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Those have continued to meet by Zoom, and, remarkably, have been filled with grace, filled with a sense of God with us, even in our quarantined quarters. I’m so very grateful to our faculty and to the program participants who have navigated the needs of the time so well. Look for these programs returning in the fall!
We all also have our personal stories of crisis and grace from these past few months. I’ll tell you one of mine.
At the end of April, a very close friend of my husband’s and mine, Jeff Lazarus, died from cancer that had been diagnosed in the fall but had seemed to be in retreat. He was 66 years old and had been our friend since grad school. He and I walked our dogs once a week for 32 years. We shared with him and his family all of our major celebrations, most recently Christmas.
Jeff was Jewish, and the quarantine interrupted our custom of participating in the Passover Seder at his and his wife’s home, which he and his family had celebrated privately at home. A pandemic Seder, but, as with all Seders, a time of remembering God’s faithfulness in all kinds of ordeals, plagues, and violent persecution.
Jeff died and was buried a few days later, during the 49 days leading up to Shavuot (Hebrew), also called Pentecost (Greek). In this holy season Jews and Christians look for God while searching our hearts to make sure there’s space there to welcome God.
The burial service for Jeff was a pandemic service. Ten of us gathered with a rabbi beside the open grave, all of us masked and looking as though we’d just robbed a bank (and someone had died in the process). We couldn’t hug one another, not even the grieving widow and children.
We could barely breathe as we choked out our words of love. We wept into our masks. One by one we each walked to the casket and touched it before it was lowered into the earth. Then, reluctantly, we each cast dirt down into the grave, and backed away from the hollow sound it gave. We were entwined together in grief and deprived of human touch. Where was God’s presence in the midst of our protectively equipped mourning?
Some of my Jewish colleagues at the Graduate Theological Union have reflected on the similarity between the words “covid” and “kavod.” Covid is the name given to the novel coronavirus disease which began in 2019 and now envelopes the globe. Kavod is the Hebrew word for “glory,” which flows from God and saturates the world. The invitation is to notice kavod in the midst of Covid.
“Glory” is a word Jesus used multiple times as he gathered with his own small circle of friends in the valley of the shadow of his own death. (The Greek word is doxa, as in “doxology.”) It has to do with honor and praise. Those friends must have noticed the awkward juxtaposition of glory language with their dire circumstances.
On the night Jesus was betrayed, as he finished the meal with his disciples, he prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1, NIV). He spoke about having glorified God on earth and implored his Father: “[G]lorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5).
Later, always attentive to others, Jesus prayed for his followers, saying, “All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.” (John 17:10). Jesus glorified his disciples. Jesus, who glorified God and prays to be glorified by God even as he has been so glorified, speaks of having been glorified through these particular, ordinary, and imperfect people.
We know of their failures. Peter, the rock on which the church is to be built, denied Jesus, even though forewarned that he would do so. Later, Peter whom Jesus says he glorified, let posterity know that story of his failure. Surely, he had some influence on how stories of those last days with Jesus were constructed and told. Even more surely, he knew that Jesus glorifies those who love and follow him, even though they fall short of his glory (Romans 3:23), time and time again.
Jesus honors us and receives the honor we bestow on him. A key use of the word kavod in Hebrew Scripture is in the commandment to honor your mother and father. Today among Jews the word often shows up in the names of funeral homes, related to the practice of honoring the dead. We give God the glory as we honor our dearly beloveds.
Kavod—glory—is relational. Jesus’s words at the Last Supper make that crystal clear. People glorify God and God glorifies people. Glory is a divine attribute, perceived by us, sometimes reflected in us, or extended by us. The Hebrew word kavod carries the connotation of weightiness, gravity (hence C. S. Lewis’s famous World War II address, “The Weight of Glory”).
On that windy day in April, standing beside the casket which held the body of our beloved friend who left us far too early, we felt the weight. The weight of our grief was met and held by the weight of God’s glory.
Nothing has sufficient weight to press against the explosion of our hearts in grief than does the weight of God’s loving glory with us. It’s why Jews sing a prayer of God’s glory as they mourn. Jesus turned to God’s glory as he faced death. Glory is what he extended to his fearful, already grieving disciples.
At Jeff’s graveside the rabbi led us in praying a special prayer, a Kaddish. The Kaddish is a prayer magnifying God’s name, speaking God’s glory. In the Jewish tradition the word “Kaddish,” which means “holy,” is most often used to refer to a mourner’s prayer. The ancient prayer (from 13th c.), written during a time when Jews were being persecuted, is in Aramaic, not Hebrew. I found it moving to be speaking Aramaic words as I grieved, words in the language Jesus spoke, possibly the language he used that night when they gathered for what may have been a Passover Seder.
The focus of the Kaddish prayer is on praising God’s glory, even in the midst of grief, even in times of persecution. It’s a prayer that can’t be prayed alone. It requires a group of 10, and we were that at the graveside.
Mourner’s Kaddish (in English Translation)
Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world
which He has created according to His will. [inspired by Ez. 38:23]
May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,
and within the life of the entire House of Israel [our people], speedily and soon; and say, Amen.
May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity. [like Daniel 2:20]
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored,
adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He,
beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that
are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us
and for all Israel [our people]; and say, Amen. [similar to Tanakh Job 25:2]
He who creates peace in His celestial heights,
may He create peace for us and for all Israel [our people];
and say, Amen. (from myjewishlearning.com)
Like a number of the psalms, the Kaddish begins with enthusiastic praise of God who is glorified and sanctified by all, and then ends with the prayer that God will grant us peace. To God be the glory, and may God’s peace—created “in His celestial heights”—flow to us all.
God’s glory shines, illuminating what’s real, and it also grounds and steadies us in that reality. It’s what many of us have sought in the pandemic, the economic crisis, and the tragedies of racial injustice.
That holy glory helps us honor those who are suffering during the pandemic:
people who’ve died isolated, intubated deaths;
people who are suffering and have died from systemic injustice, including the disproportionate impact of Covid on communities of color;
people who have exhausted themselves by working in hospitals, retirement homes, and mortuaries as they have sought to care for and even honor the afflicted;
teachers, factory workers, pastors, restaurant workers, retail laborers, travel industry employees, farmworkers, and all the other people, especially those who are poor, who have been quarantined and unable to earn the money they need to feed themselves and their families;
people at all levels of government who have faced the nearly impossible challenge of trying to protect us from illness and simultaneously protect us from economic hardship;
children who’ve gone without school and time with friends;
people—most of us—who cry out in grief and protest and lament;
friendship groups and worshiping communities who have been unable to gather together in person; and
the bereft, unable to be held and comforted by those who love them.
We have searched for Covid Kavod, the weight of God’s glory in this time of mourning. Many of us have glimpsed it—I imagine you have, too. That glory of the Lord draws us together. The Kaddish prayer praising God’s glory is only allowed to be spoken by a group of people. God’s glory binds us to God and others.
Following Jesus’s death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit’s descent on Pentecost enabled people to understand one another, even across language barriers. So, too, the glory of the Lord in the midst of the Covid pandemic has drawn people together around the world in shared compassion. May we do better at listening to and understanding one another across language barriers and racial and cultural differences.
Together we praise God’s glory. Together we yearn for healing and peace and reconciliation. I experienced God’s glory beside Jeff’s grave. Perhaps a Covid Kaddish has been written, but I haven’t heard it. For me, Hillsong’s “Hosanna” expresses my yearning toward God’s kavod in this Covid pandemic.
Hosanna (Hillsong)
I see the King of Glory
Coming on the clouds with fire
The whole earth shakes, the whole earth shakes, yeah
I see His love and mercy
Washing over all our sin
The people sing, the people sing
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
I see a generation
Rising up to take their place
With selfless faith, with selfless faith
I see a near revival
Stirring as we pray and seek
We're on our knees, we're on our knees
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna, Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna in the highest
In the highest
In the highest
Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest
Susan Phillips, PhD, is Executive Director of New College Berkeley; Core Doctoral Faculty, Graduate Theological Union.
(Here’s a link to this song being performed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnMevXQutyE)