On this fifth anniversary of the start of the COVID pandemic, I find myself facing a tsunami of emotions. A big part of me just wants to try to forget everything that has happened and move on as best I can. I want to run from the rush of memories: the magnitude of death, the dull depression, the emotional exhaustion, the continual reinvention of life, the feeling that it was all just too much. Avoidance, denial, and an inability to properly grieve is a normal and understandable reaction to trauma, and at the same time, it’s deeply problematic.

In an opinion piece for The New York Times, “How COVID Remade Us,” journalist David Wallace-Wells argues that our collective reaction to the pandemic is a primary driver of much of what we’re experiencing now politically. At the outset of the epidemic, he writes,

Getting infected roughly doubled a person’s overall risk of premature death. This might have become an object lesson in human frailty and interdependence. Instead, we pointed fingers at one another, scapegoating so as to avoid acknowledging that the threat was beyond our control. . . . In May 2021, the International Monetary Fund calculated that the cost of vaccinating 60 percent of the population in all countries by 2022 would be just $50 billion, with a return of $9 trillion by 2025. But the failure to vaccinate the whole world showed just how few rich countries were interested in taking the deal. Instead of pulling together in the face of a global disaster, we got a turn toward lifeboat ethics, immigration panic, wolf warrior diplomacy and a politics of all against all. . . . The world . . . seems abrasive and rapacious and shaped nearly everywhere by a barely suppressed rage. We have still not reckoned with all we have lost.^[1]

In a few compact and confusing verses, today’s Gospel reading presents a stunning picture of Jesus. We first hear that Jesus was warned by the Pharisees that Herod wanted to kill him. The Pharisees were sometimes Jesus’ adversaries; here they show up as allies, with a shared aversion to the ruler of Galilee, the puppet of Rome, cruel and without conscience. “Go and tell that fox.” Jesus’ reply is an insult, a taunt. A lion would be the proper, respectful image for royalty. Despite the danger Jesus faced, and the limited time left to him, today, tomorrow, and the next day, he said, he would not hide, run or fight. He would continue, relentlessly, with his work of healing and liberating, his work of making peace and restoring wholeness.

At the same time, Jesus was terribly vulnerable, and he knew it and embraced it. In the face of Herod, the fox, he compared himself to a mother hen with soft feathers and a downy breast. Jesus knew that he would soon meet his end, if not in Galilee, then in Jerusalem. Jesus was fierce and defiant, but he was also full of lament, crying out in pain for himself, for his people and his holy city. The people Jesus loved and labored over with such purpose proved themselves to be, well, people—who acted like wayward chicks, rebuffing divine comfort, rejecting the call of God’s prophets, refusing to embrace the changes of heart that would lead to abundant life.    

“On the third day I finish my work,” Jesus declared. The third day is a deeply symbolic reference to the empty tomb. Jesus completed his work by bravely staying the course of love, even in the face of torture and execution. And his faithfulness brought a new reality into being—resurrection. The power of divine vulnerability overcame tyranny for good, ensuring that violence and repression do not get the last word.

In these times, amid extreme individualism, lack of empathy, attacks on the social safety net, polarization, demonization of immigrants, weakening of government institutions, embrace of white supremacist ideology, reactionary ideas about gender, and eagerness of billionaires to support the dismantling of democracy, Jesus shows us a different way. Prayerfully, let us draw strength from his boldness and purposefulness, his vulnerability for the sake of love, his willingness to grieve and lament, and his trust in the promise of resurrection. Amen.

^[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/04/opinion/covid-impact-five-years-later.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1k4.hVHv.QQUYC9wDl9g5&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare